Why Doesn't The Military Shoot Down UFOs/UAPs in Military Airspace?
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banditsat12oclock
Member
That's definitely the $64,000 question.
Why not at least try to shoot down unindentified, and presumably unmanned, aircraft in restricted US airspace if they're suspected of spying, deemed to be a potential threat, or thought to be a hazard to airmen? They're over the water. The (Chinese/Russian) owner isn't going to complain. There's no risk to life or limb from doing so, etc.
Alternatively, DARPA would presumably not want US Navy pilots engaging its drones (if that's what any of them are). That there are zero reports of pilots actually shooting at these alleged UAPs presumably indicates they (a) don't really exist, (b) are nothing but balloons, etc., or (c) are US hardware out on test flights.
Because you might be wrong, end up killing someone, and causing a massive scandal and/or international incident.
Extreme, but highly relevant example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
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Ravi
Senior Member.
Sadly, a more recent example can be given as well..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
External Quote:
banditsat12oclock
Member
Personally, I can't say I accept either of those as relevant examples. Both of those were scheduled civilian flights in non-military airspace involving aircraft hundreds of feet in length. I also don't feel it's reasonable to compare a ship shooting a missile at a radar target hundreds of miles away and beyond visual range with experienced US navy pilots shooting at 40-foot alleged tic-tacs or self-evidently unmanned batman balloons or beach balls in restricted military zones which are flying, allegedly, within a few feet of them, and which they can see with their own eyes.
That said, clearly they're not shooting them down (or not admitting that they are), but I also don't accept it's because they scared of scandals or that they've told their pilots to not be reckless. This is the American military-industrial complex we're talking about! They'll happily let their pilots fly under Italian ski lifts, kill dozens of people, yet accept no culpability, or let them drive on the wrong side of the road in England and kill people, yet refuse extradition requests. They aren't party to the international criminal court, they conduct extraordinary renditions, operate black torture sites, drone strike American citizens overseas without due process, engage in wholesale warrantless worldwide surveillance, and blast entire wedding parties to smithereens without the slightest sign that they're worried about international opinion.
Shooting down an unmanned drone that a pilot can see with his own eyes, that's potentially Chi-Com tech illegally spying on you, that's just a few feet in diameter, thousands of feet in the air and 100 miles out over the ocean in a restricted military zone free from all other traffic would seem, to me, to be as safe as you could get if you wanted to start loosing off munitions.
And yet they're not doing so...
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fartchitect
New Member
To talk about RoE, you'd have to admit they are more than birds/baloons. No RoE against a baloon, and I'm preety sure it's hard to misidentify a bird/baloon with an actual enemy. Not to mention an A/A missle is more than 100k a piece, so you gotta be sure it's an enemy you're looking at. If anyone has an example of an A/A missle being shot at a bird or a baloon, I'm gonna eat my words.
Me personally, I don't belive they're birds or baloons. If those objects on footage and described by pilots would have been such a thing, they could have circled around (or catch up) the target to get a better visual. Maybe they have, and that's why the videos cut short, and it's all a big lie, but that's speculation for now.
If a pilot is generally afraid to "report" an UAP, he most certainly will be afraid to shoot one, especially if he's unsure about the id of the target. So until we get actual data, my guess is either it's mind tricks or some freeky tech.
LilWabbit
Senior Member
A typical rule of engagement for modern armed forces under democratic governments is not to engage anything if unsure of a threat. Engagement requires ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance). In the case of UAP, there is, by definition, little or no intel on what is being encountered.
After acquiring sufficient intel enabling the identification of a particular threat, its level of threat must next be determined. For each threat type and level there is an appropriate response under RoE. RoEs frequently disallow engagement even with identified threats if they are deemed low-level threats or not assuming a hostile posture. Obviously, all the foregoing steps require a lot of training, repeated exercises, seamless team effort and swift decision-making in order to produce the intended operational outcome under tight time constraints and within highly multivariate operational settings.
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MclachlanM
Active Member
ROE and what you can call a 'threat' is generally vague and situation based instead of set in stone:
Shooting down a UAP in any of the examples we've heard from AATIP/TTSA would certainly cross the line.
The law of armed conflict:
As far as threat is concerned, Fravor mentioned in the Rogan podcast that the tic tac actively jammed his radar which is a threat and against international law (I've looked and can't find an actual law though). This contradicts the Fox interview where he and Dietrich's WSO say they were never threatened. Also superpowers routinely break these rules by sending fighters/bombers into each others airspace just to flex their muscles etc so keep in mind that in practise the rules and law are only suggestions.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44642842.pdf
Shooting down a UAP in any of the examples we've heard from AATIP/TTSA would certainly cross the line.
The law of armed conflict:
https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/law1_final.pdf
As far as threat is concerned, Fravor mentioned in the Rogan podcast that the tic tac actively jammed his radar which is a threat and against international law (I've looked and can't find an actual law though). This contradicts the Fox interview where he and Dietrich's WSO say they were never threatened. Also superpowers routinely break these rules by sending fighters/bombers into each others airspace just to flex their muscles etc so keep in mind that in practise the rules and law are only suggestions.
Alexandria Nick
Senior Member.
Yet these were rare events where the US military didn't hand personnel over for punishment because they handled the punishment themselves. If host countries wanted to charge US service members, they should not have agreed to the provisions in NATO that left jurisdiction in US hands.
Nevertheless, "there have been occasional events where irresponsible action by members of the US military resulted in civilian death" does not mean that there's carte blanche weapons free on all targets at all times.
LilWabbit
Senior Member
An important clarification, @MclachlanM. Threat-assessment within the space of minutes or even seconds is ultimately entirely dependent on autonomous case-by-case judgment by the on-scene commander. The RoE, whatever they are, provide a framework within which he makes his decisions. This framework is neither perfect nor absolute, especially if the forces and materiel under his command are under imminent threat of an attack.
The on-scene reality is always far more messy than neat rules. Things inevitably get dicey and complex in the minute-to-minute reality of armed conflict. This is precisely why Auftragstaktik (mission-type tactics / mission command) evolved into an inextricable aspect of modern warfare. Mission-type tactics require clarity on mission objectives, rules of engagement, as well as on-scene tactical flexibility (including with respect to the RoE) without compromising on mission objectives.
Proportional response to an aggression is another case in point, required under International Humanitarian Law, whilst frequently violated. Proportional response would apply to engagements with the UAP as well.
I served in Afghanistan for 4 years in various capacities and on several occasions. A while back, after several high-collateral-damage airstrikes against Taliban commanders using civilian settlements as human shields, which resulted in these formerly neutral populations joining the insurgents, a famous US General amended the RoE on air raids: Every airstrike or attack must be called off if there is even an uncertainty of civilian presence.
This goes to show how cautious the RoE can get even when dealing with active threats intent upon inflicting maximum casualty on your forces. What more with the UAP.
banditsat12oclock
Member
Rare? I'd have to see the data tbh. But what I do see is a pattern of a hyperpower putting itself and its men above the law because it can. All this is really off point, and this is the last I'll post about it, but the cable car killers were, quelle surprise, found not guilty, and you and I both know the pilot and navigator were never truly punished (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash), not even when subsequently found guilty for destroying evidence. Moreover, the Harry Dunn case is ongoing, but it looks, at most, as if the driver might get house arrest for a few months, if that. Maybe WFH will be deemed a 'cruel and unusual punishment' for well-connected spooks and she can appeal that as well.
With all due respect, no one ever said it did.
Let's now return to the question: Why NOT shoot at a UAP? For me, the key issues are what I feel are the apparent contradictions.
1. UAPs are officially unknown craft (allegedly), hence they're not US military tech and shouldn't legally be up there.
2. There have been allegedly hundreds (if not thousands over the decades) of regular encounters ("every day for years", "fleets of them", "for months", "followed us to the Gulf", etc).
3. They often occur in restricted military airspace, hence they're not civilian airliners.
4. They occur thousands of feet up and hundreds of miles out at sea, hence there's almost no risk to anyone else of a stray shot or falling debris.
5. The objects are allegedly seen with the naked eye, sometimes within feet of pilots and aircraft, hence identification as non-civilian craft should be easy.
6. They're often said to be too small to be manned, hence low to no risk of injuries/deaths if you shoot at them.
7. The objects are alleged to sometimes jam radars (an aggressive act), and are sometimes so close to US craft that they're an alleged collision risk, hence you could justify shooting one down.
8. It's all one huge mystery apparently, worthy of an entire UAP task force, a secret Congressional report, acres of newsprint, multiple TV series, hyperbolic claims, breathless reportage, feature films, etc., hence more evidence, any evidence, is sorely needed.
9. And yet no one, not once, has ever, apparently, been reported to have fired even 1 round at a UAP, pursued one to its destination, or chased one until it ran out of fuel and crashed, in order to try and solve this mystery.
10. Similarly, a nation which spends more on defence than the next 15 countries combined, and which possesses the most sophisticated array of aircraft, ships, subs, sensors, cameras, sonar buoys, satellites, and recording equipment known to mankind, and which claims to be able to track an LA baseball from NYC or a 1cm piece of space junk in orbit, declares itself dumbfounded by what these aerial objects are, where they come from, where they go, who's operating them, or what their intentions are.
Now, no one, least of all me, is suggesting that US pilots should go in all guns blazing at everything they can't immediately identify, but points 9 and 10 strike me as being completely at odds with points 1-8, if the former are accurate and accepted, hence the whole thing smells very badly, to me, of total and utter BS. The idea that there are unknown, hyper-sophisticated things appearing, disappearing, and flying rings around US craft, yet everyone in the Pentagon is sat with their eyes closed and fingers in their ears, and no pilot/officer combo (asking permission to fire and giving it) has ever thought, "Let's get an answer to this," across a period of at least 16 years (since Fravor et al in 2004), strikes me as preposterous, ROE be damned.
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Alexandria Nick
Senior Member.
In my counting, one time ever fits the definition of rare. Harping on the cable car incident is odd for a supposed "non-rare" event (that is, US military aviators doing something that resulted in civilian death outside of combat operations), considering that there's actually been more times that the US military has attempted to engage UFOs in combat. Which, I'm sure you would agree, is super freaking rare.
It doesn't matter who you are. Guy in your dark house at night with a hand gun, a police officer approaching a car, or flying around in an F/A-18E. You don't shoot at a target unless you're 110 percent ready to destroy what is on the other end. There's an inherent paradox here. You don't know what it is, so you can't fire on it to figure out what it is, because you don't know what it is. No part of that seems unreasonable and is entirely pragmatic.
It doesn't matter who you are. Guy in your dark house at night with a hand gun, a police officer approaching a car, or flying around in an F/A-18E. You don't shoot at a target unless you're 110 percent ready to destroy what is on the other end. There's an inherent paradox here. You don't know what it is, so you can't fire on it to figure out what it is, because you don't know what it is. No part of that seems unreasonable and is entirely pragmatic.
Brian Dunning
Member
This is a silly proposition. First because the videos anyone knows about are optical illusions showing either unremarkable objects (flares, birds, balloons) or commercial airliners; but second because we don't just shoot people down in peacetime.
Years ago some friends and I flew a Skyhawk around Area 51, carefully staying outside the borders of the MOA, easy to track on the nav screen, which is totally legal to do. YouTube commenters often said the video was fake because if we'd actually done that we'd have been shot down. Really? Has the US *ever* shot someone down inside the US? No (though they meant to on 9/11, but that wasn't peacetime). In fact, there are records of several people ACTUALLY LANDING at Area 51. They are arrested and handed over to the local sheriff. They are not shot down or murdered. Americans can often take their paranoia to an absurd extent.
Years ago some friends and I flew a Skyhawk around Area 51, carefully staying outside the borders of the MOA, easy to track on the nav screen, which is totally legal to do. YouTube commenters often said the video was fake because if we'd actually done that we'd have been shot down. Really? Has the US *ever* shot someone down inside the US? No (though they meant to on 9/11, but that wasn't peacetime). In fact, there are records of several people ACTUALLY LANDING at Area 51. They are arrested and handed over to the local sheriff. They are not shot down or murdered. Americans can often take their paranoia to an absurd extent.
Brian Dunning
Member
I hate to think shooting down an airliner is what it's going to take for people to get off this embarrassing "alien visitation" bandwagon.
banditsat12oclock
Member
You've lost me. Why would not knowing exactly what something was preclude you from firing at it? The pilots known damn well there's no one on board these things and there's no danger to anyone from engaging one.
Bear in mind, these are the kind of "UAPs" we're supposed to believe have been engaged in a multi-decade mystery, blowing the minds of the US Navy's best and brightest, jamming their radars, and running rings around their jet interceptors, yet which they're loathe to call a threat, incapable of catching, and seemingly unwilling to attack. If there's any paradox here, it's why this is even a story at all.
Who could fear the international ramifications of popping one of these? Maybe DC Comics could take the pilots to task for destroying their property, but that'd be it.
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jarlrmai
Senior Member.
Because if you don't know what it is you might have just fired on a civilian airliner because your radar was glitching out and now 300 people are dead and the NCIS can call you up and go turns out it wasnt aliens as they pick through the wreckage of children's holiday luggage.
banditsat12oclock
Member
Is anyone actually reading what I write?
As previously mentioned, I'm talking exclusively about the balloon-style UAPs the airmen can see with their naked eyes literally feet from their aircraft, not radar targets hundreds of miles away a la the USS Vincennes.
Radar jamming is threatening behaviour.
Flying in restricted airspace is threatening behaviour.
Presumably refusing to respond and identify oneself is threatening behaviour.
Allegedly flying between two F-18s is threatening behaviour.
Yet we're supposed to believe that the US military brass are like, "Hey, chill out! They're just hypersonic, radar-jamming, transmedium craft of unknown origin penetrating our air defences at will and almost colliding with and out-manoeuvering our frontline fighters", instead of: "Let's shoot down one of these mysterious craft (or at the very least follow it to its destination), one which is obviously not the red-eye to Vegas, and maybe we can go through the wreckage and see what's what."
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jarlrmai
Senior Member.
Those balloons were seen really close to a popular resort beach canon fire would be a real danger to civilian boats or even people on the beach and loosing off a missile would be worse.
banditsat12oclock
Member
35,000 feet up according to The Debrief... and I don't know how many miles out over the water. Not my idea of close, especially if shooting ocean-wards.
Anyway, I think the greater point I'm trying to make is being missed here, namely that, on the balance of probabilities, they're holding fire not because of fear of hitting little Billy Bob vacationing on Virginia Beach, or shooting down a Virgin Atlantic charter by mistake, but simply because this whole narrative is contradictory nonsense designed for an ulterior purpose. To the military, these aren't really UAPs and they're not really a threat, hence there's no need to shoot.
jarlrmai
Senior Member.
It's possible, though the rules of using military weapons of war in US airspace must be pretty tight, I'd imagine squeezing off some canon fire a few miles out from Virginia beach might have you doing paperwork for a long old time.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/sp...om-an-f-18-via-mystery-wire.11692/post-248044
I take your point though, maybe we've just not been told about any events where someone tried to engage one.
Why not start with taking some HD video?
banditsat12oclock
Member
For me, they're definitely taking it. They're just not releasing it, because to do so would blow this nonsense out the water (metaphorically).
jarlrmai
Senior Member.
They being the pilots and the other they being?
We reach this odd stalemate
Somebody want us to think the US Navy is encountering unusual "non human" craft in the sky/at sea.
Somehow those people have enough insider knowledge and access to leak some footage from planes/pilots/ships that they have cherry picked to mispresent the real situation and further the narrative.
They also have some pilot testimonies somehow about one specific event that is conflated with the videos/photos.
The real situation is maybe that the Navy was/is worried about foreign drones.
So either
The actual real Navy know what's going on in most of the cases for which we have seen the cherry picked data but either can't tell us because of their own rules relating to the nature of this footage, or don't want to tell us for some other reason, useful misdirection? Or they just don't care even though congress people are starting to ask questions.
Or the issue is the people that ran/run the program/programmes that purported to be investigating the drones, is the same people now spinning the footage that they gathered from that program as "non human" craft and there actually is no real investigation.
Essentially the US Navy gave some cowboys the key to the "UAP house" and are being used to launder the evidence to make it seem official and no-one can or wants to do anything about it.
I suppose we wait for this report, meanwhile the current UFO flap in the post Trump / Q anon era increasingly takes on more of that conspiracy's characteristics.
We reach this odd stalemate
Somebody want us to think the US Navy is encountering unusual "non human" craft in the sky/at sea.
Somehow those people have enough insider knowledge and access to leak some footage from planes/pilots/ships that they have cherry picked to mispresent the real situation and further the narrative.
They also have some pilot testimonies somehow about one specific event that is conflated with the videos/photos.
The real situation is maybe that the Navy was/is worried about foreign drones.
So either
The actual real Navy know what's going on in most of the cases for which we have seen the cherry picked data but either can't tell us because of their own rules relating to the nature of this footage, or don't want to tell us for some other reason, useful misdirection? Or they just don't care even though congress people are starting to ask questions.
Or the issue is the people that ran/run the program/programmes that purported to be investigating the drones, is the same people now spinning the footage that they gathered from that program as "non human" craft and there actually is no real investigation.
Essentially the US Navy gave some cowboys the key to the "UAP house" and are being used to launder the evidence to make it seem official and no-one can or wants to do anything about it.
I suppose we wait for this report, meanwhile the current UFO flap in the post Trump / Q anon era increasingly takes on more of that conspiracy's characteristics.
banditsat12oclock
Member
'They' being the pilots, and the other 'they' being them.
(Whoever it is who's releasing to Corbell et al the evidencially worthless, unfocused shakycam footage.)This is the really eyebrow-raising point for me. It's not like the Navy couldn't just say: "We're encountering foreign drones and we want more money/men/materiel to help us deal with them. Why concoct the underwater aliens hypothesis? How does that help their cause? Maybe someone in the Navy just has a weird sense of humour.
I agree with your post ultimately.
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Could it be a bit of both? Maybe regular incursions by foreign drones are a real thing. Maybe the circle of "UFO fans" within the government and military have coopted that phenomenon to lend credence to their fanciful ideas about spooky alien visitors. As far as we're aware the entire UFO narrative within the government has been largely propelled by a pretty small circle of people. Almost everything in modern ufology can be traced back to Bigelow & Puthoff.
The big question remains whether or not there is hitherto unseen "evidence" that has been able to convince all these officials, including ex-presidents, that there is really something extraordinary happening in American skies. They've definitely mentioned things we haven't been privy to, like unexplainable aeronautics and satellite imagery. If that much is true one has to wonder where the USAF has been in all this crap. They're tasked with securing American airspace after all.
Theferäl
New Member
Maybe not shoot them down, but given Ryan Graves' allegation that UAPs were apparently being seen every day "for years", you would've perhaps expected the military to have been more proactive in finding out what they were. I find their seeming lack of interest completely bizarre.
I think Mick West asked Kevin Day why the higher authorities weren't initially bothered by the strange radar returns on the Princeton and he didn't have an answer either.
I think Mick West asked Kevin Day why the higher authorities weren't initially bothered by the strange radar returns on the Princeton and he didn't have an answer either.
Alexandria Nick
Senior Member.
We are, but you're seemingly not grasping what we're saying: the military (despite popular concepts) doesn't open up on any old target, despite threatening behavior, violation of airspace, or what have you, without explicit orders.
There's also a bit of a problem: if you're seeing a very small object that's naked eye distance away and still small, you're just going to obliterate it and that doesn't help you figure out what it is. Observe and report.
I can't help but notice a Navy/Air Force split that seems to have a glaringly obvious distinction. The Air Force doesn't encounter things because they're flying around feet dry, where no adversary can operate underneath them. The Navy, flying and sailing around in environs where any adversary can operate without much trouble, sees things. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that the Navy sees things the Air Force doesn't!
Agent K
Senior Member
Iran shot down a U.S. Navy drone two years ago on June 20, 2019, but months later shot down a Ukrainian airliner carrying mostly Iranian Canadian passengers on January 8, 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Iranian_shoot-down_of_American_drone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines_Flight_752
The U.S. Marines said they jammed an Iranian drone on July 18, 2019, but an Iranian official tweeted, "We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else. I am worried that USS Boxer has shot down their own UAS by mistake!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Iranian_shoot-down_of_American_drone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines_Flight_752
The U.S. Marines said they jammed an Iranian drone on July 18, 2019, but an Iranian official tweeted, "We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else. I am worried that USS Boxer has shot down their own UAS by mistake!"
banditsat12oclock
Member
No, no, I understand you fine, but, tbh, I think my point is being mischaracterised/misunderstood, and we've probably reached an impasse absent new data.
Main point: People are trying to have their cake and eat it.
1. The general allegation could be roughly put as: "hypersonic, radar-jamming, transmedium craft of unknown origin are (and have been for decades) penetrating US air defences at will, sometimes almost colliding with, and routinely out-manoeuvering and out-pacing, US frontline fighters. Even after rigorous investigation, no one knows where they're from, where they go, what they're doing, or who's behind the controls."
2. "Evidence" (and that is the loosest possible use of that word in human history) to substantiate claim 1 is then is "leaked" to people like Corbell. Cue OMGs, raised eyebrows, and all-round extrapolated mania, despite the video footage offering no real conclusions and being almost the lowest quality imaginable.
3. At the same time as we're expected to believe that naval aviators have had decades of encounters with "fleets" of beyond-next-gen craft of unknown origin and unknown purpose, though, no one is said to have ever fired on one, recovered one, crashed into one, tracked one to its source, declared it to be a colossal national security risk, made this matter a Pentagon-wide priority, and so on, hence the US military, in its home airspace, is apparently pretty blase about being made to look second rate, and doesn't feel the need to respond in any appreciably urgent way, even though a nanosecond's thought would reveal that, if war were declared, and an adversary did have the technological advantages being suggested, the US's battlegroups would be toast.
That's literally and metaphorically unbelievable.
Hence, in ascending order of ease, assuming any of it is true, it'd be a doddle to solve:
(a) Release full HD videos, cockpit comms, and/or other conclusive sensor data, which the military must have; or
(b) Pursue a UAP to its base (be it on land, in space, or on a ship/sub), and release the data; or
(c) Pursue a UAP until it runs out of fuel and then recover it, and release the data; or
(d) Shoot a UAP down and release the data (assuming that the craft are vulnerable to modern human weapons, and only doing so in the event that an aircrew is armed, has permission to engage, is over the water, away from anything/anyone else, and in eyeball contact with an obviously unmanned craft that's 110% not a civilian airliner.) Yes, destruction of the UAP would be highly likely, and retrieval would be very difficult, but in the absence of (a-c) this still seems a reasonable option to me. If nothing else, it would prove that these UAPs could be caught/destroyed by human tech, which would almost certainly reveal them to be human tech.
Critically, though, that all of (a-d) are not supposedly being done (especially 'a'), and that, instead, all that's publicly being offered as 'proof' of the existence of UAPs is short, low-res, choppy, edited, shaky, unclear and out-of-focus footage of glowing aerial things which, after years of alleged investigation by professionals with multi-million dollar budgets and bleeding-edge tech, are pronounced to be real UAPs, but which 48 hours after release are convincingly shown by debunkers to be nothing of the sort, shows this to be total bunkum.
Agreed.
Stick a fork in me.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
The Air Force never flies over water? Color me "doubtful."
banditsat12oclock
Member
I smell a linguistic rat, too, similar to when Mick West got the military to confirm that an initial designation of UAP doesn't publicly change even when an object has been covertly identified.
Exactly. An Air2Air Missile is probably pretty ineffective against a weather balloon.
Alexandria Nick
Senior Member.
Obviously not "never." Eglin and Tindall, for instance, are as close to marine environs as any naval air station. But, in terms of operations and training, the typical Air Force vehicle is inland compared to an aircraft carrier's aircraft that are at sea.
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