We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating.

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videosdocumenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.  

The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest .

A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015.

Leave it to Mueller to uncover what stinks about that secret Seychelles meeting between a Trump donor and a Putin affiliate. (The Washington Post)

Is it possible that America has been technologically leap-frogged by Russia or China? Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilization? 

Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.

I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of “anomalous” aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data. 

Meanwhile, reports from different services and agencies remain largely ignored and unevaluated inside their respective bureaucratic stovepipes. There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making. The current approach is equivalent to having the Army conduct a submarine search without the Navy. It is also reminiscent of the counterterrorism efforts of the CIA and the FBI before Sept. 11, 2001, when each had information on the hijackers that they kept to themselves. In this instance, the truth may ultimately prove benign, but why leave it to chance? 

(A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment, but in December, the military confirmed the existence of a program to investigate UFOs and said it had stopped funding the research in 2012.)

The military personnel who are encountering these phenomena tell remarkable stories. In one example, over the course of two weeks in November 2004, the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser operating advanced naval radar, repeatedly detected unidentified aircraft operating in and around the Nimitz carrier battle group, which it was guarding off the coast of San Diego. In some cases, according to incident reports and interviews with military personnel, these vehicles descended from altitudes higher than 60,000 feet at supersonic speeds, only to suddenly stop and hover as low as 50 feet above the ocean. The United States possesses nothing capable of such feats.

On at least two occasions, F-18 fighters were guided to intercept these vehicles and were able to verify their location, appearance and performance. Notably, these encounters occurred in broad daylight and were independently monitored by radars aboard multiple ships and aircraft. According to naval aviators I have spoken with at length, the vehicles were roughly 45 feet long and white. Yet these mysterious aircraft easily sped away from and outmaneuvered America’s front-line fighters without a discernible means of propulsion. 

From my work with To the Stars Academy, which seeks to raise private funds to investigate incidents like the 2004 Nimitz encounter, I know they continue to occur, because we are being approached by military personnel who are concerned about national security and frustrated by how the Defense Department is handling such reports. I am also familiar with the evidence as a former Pentagon intelligence official and a consultant who began researching the issue after the Nimitz incident was brought to my attention. On several occasions, I have met with senior Pentagon officials, and at least one followed up and obtained briefings confirming incidents such as the Nimitz case. But nobody wants to be “the alien guy” in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue. This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress. 

If the origin of these aircraft is a mystery, so is the paralysis of the U.S. government in the face of such evidence. Sixty years ago, when the Soviet Union put the first manmade satellite in orbit, Americans recoiled at the idea of being technologically surpassed by a dangerous rival, and the furor over Sputnik ultimately produced the space race. Americans responded vigorously, and a little more than a decade later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. If these craft mean that Russia, China or some other nation is concealing an astonishing technological breakthrough to quietly extend its lead, surely we should respond as we did then. Perhaps Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s recent chest-thumping claims about propulsion breakthroughs are not pure braggadocio. Or, if these craft really aren’t from Earth, then the need to figure out what they are is even more urgent.

Lately, media coverage of the issue of unidentified aerial vehicles has focused on an expired $22 million congressional earmark for Bigelow Aerospace, a contractor with ties to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The money mostly funded research and analysis by that contractor, without participation from the Air Force, NORAD or other key military organizations. The real issue, though, is not a long-gone earmark, helpful though it may have been, but numerous recent incidents involving the military and violations of U.S. airspace. It is time to set aside taboos regarding “UFOs” and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators. 

Within a roughly $50 billion annual intelligence budget, money is not the issue. Existing funds would easily cover what’s needed to look into the incidents. What we lack above all is recognition that this issue warrants a serious collection and analysis effort. To make headway, the task needs to be assigned to an official with the clout to compel collaboration among disparate and often quarrelsome national security bureaucracies. A truly serious effort would involve, among other things, analysts able to review infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting. Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability.

As with Sputnik, the national security implications of these incidents are concerning — but the scientific opportunities are thrilling. Who knows what perils we may avoid or opportunities we might identify if we follow the data? We cannot afford to avert our eyes, given the risk of strategic surprise. The future belongs to not only the physically brave but also the intellectually agile.

Quelle: The Washington Post

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Update: 13.03.2018

.

Wie schon bei den beiden vorausgegangenen UFO-Videos wird nun von Metabunk auch das dritte "Beweis-UFO-Video" auf Herz und Nieren geprüft und scheint schlecht auszugehen. Bitter würde es wenn sich amerikanische Ufologen vor Seevögeln und Ballons fürchten und der daraus resultierenden Gefahr für das Land.

Schaun wir wie sich die Untersuchungen der Kollegen von Metabunk entwickeln!

CENAP-Michelstadt

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"GO FAST" Footage from Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy. Bird?

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMnBxI4fTac


Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...bf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.7ef229f30df7
TTSA:
https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/2015-go-fast-footage/

[NOTE: 259 knots is incorrect. The number indicated is CAS (Calibrated Air Speed), which is the air speed read by the instruments calibrated for sea level. Adjusting for 25,000 feet altitude the actual True Air Speed is 369 knots. See: https://www.metabunk.org/posts/220136/]

My first thought here is that it's a bird. When it first locks on we have:

-26°, 4.4 RNG, 25,000 feet barometer altitude.

Then later,

-35°, 3.4 RNG, 25,010 alt (essentially the same alt)

assuming RNG is a straight line, not horizontal distance, then that puts it 2.14 miles down in the first shot (4.2*tan(27 degrees) and 2.38 down in the second.

So assuming those numbers are more or less accurate then it's an object that's around 12,000 feet in altitude, viewed from a jet at 25,000 feet. Basically it's half way between the jet and the ocean surface.

Edit: Don't know what I was thinking there, it's sin not tan, so
4.4*sin(26 degrees) = 1.92 miles
3.4*sin(35 degrees) = 1.95 miles

So still the same ballpark, about halfway down (assuming RNG is the straight line distance to the object.) RNG is probably nautical miles, so 25000 feet is 4.11 nautical miles.


Hence the perceived motion of the object against the ocean surface, even if it were moving very slowly, would be the same as the speed of the jet itself. This is hugely magnified by the high zoom (NAR, or around 1.5° FOV). Here's an example of a static object that looks like it's moving through some trees:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdIEY1Ska_U


The strangeness of the footage is largely a function of the ability of the ATFLIR camera to lock on to a white spot and track it. This accents the visual illusion that the object is moving because the parallax effect.

The bird (or other slow moving object, but I suspect a large soaring sea bird) hypothesis tallies with the angle. The object starts out at 43° to the left, and continues left to 58°

The white dot, whatever it is, would be invisible to the naked eye. It's in NAR mode, which has a FOV of 1.5°. Hence they were ONLY looking at it on the ATFLIR.

Similar to the GIMBAL footage, but without the glare. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-encounter-with-unknown-object.t9333/

1. The first idea that I would want to explore is whether or not the "go fast" object is actually relatively stationary. During the first few seconds of the video, when the camera appears fixed, the angles are changing. This means that it's not actually fixed, but rather, the camera is panning in order to track a single spot on the ocean.
   
   A stationary object, high up, would be expected to appear moving, relative to the ocean.
   
   If it is relatively stationary, like a balloon, that would explain why it appears to have no wings or exhaust plume and isn't very hot.

    

   Last edited: Friday at 3:23 PM

   Brian Vincent, Friday at 2:51 PM

   #2
2. 

   Mick West

   Yes, that's essentially the gist of my post, above. A slow moving bird, and parallax.

   1. I thought that a balloon would be more likely than a bird because 12,000 ft seemed rather high for birds to be flying. I was rather surprised to learn that 12,000 ft isn't very high and well within the range of many migratory birds and birds of prey.
      
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_heights

       

      Brian Vincent, Friday at 3:32 PM

      #4
   2.  
3. 

   Mick West

   Created a video showing the parallax effect for a similarly position object on a much smaller scale.
   
   

   
   Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdIEY1Ska_U

   Here's the motion of the ocean and of the UFO from 1seconds 22 frames to 3seconds 2 frames.
4.  

   The camera here is not fixed, it is panning to the left, going from 36L to 37L over the course of this segment. This complicates matters. It's also tilting down from 22° to 23°
   
   i suspect the initial camera motion might be some kind of default ground tracking. After it locks onto the UFO/Bird this changes.
   
   But I think the fact that the motions are parallel indicates they are both derived from the motion of the plane.
   
   In fact with a FOV of 1.5° the camera MUST be attempting to track the ground in normal use. If the camera were not continually compensating for the motion of the plane then you would constantly be seeing the background just whizz past.

    

   Last edited: Saturday at 11:13 PM

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   One problem common to all these TTAS videos is that they're just clips. No context. We don't know what happened before or after. If this one's a bird or a balloon (and why not, so far) how do we know one of the crewmen we hear didn't open the exchange by saying "Hey, is that a [gull/albatross/migrating dove down there? Betcha can't catch that on your FLIR!" —and so the guy does, with much whoo-hoo-ha from his mates. With all that kit to play with, and no war on, does anyone really expect these guys not to play games with it? (Infantrymen do the same with rifles after all. O, the stories one should not tell!)

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   Size estimates. The video frame is 950 pixels across in the Washington Post version. When the object is closest (3.3 nautical miles), the object appears around 12 pixels across. Hard to say exactly. But from these numbers we can calculate the angle subtended by the object as as 12/950*1.5 degrees)
   
   tan(12/950*1.5 degrees)*3.3 nautical miles in feet =6.6 feet
   
   
   
   Arguably you could say it's larger, but I think if anything it's smaller, as it's very blurry.
   
   So what birds have a 6 foot wingspan, and can fly at 13,000 feet?
   
   (or what other object, like weather balloons).

    

   Last edited: Friday at 10:32 PM

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   One possibly significant point is that the object appears colder than the water. BLK means black=hot, but it's white.

   

   It is (probably) at 13,000 feet. Where the air would probably be colder than the water. Would a well insulated bird still show up as cold (on average). Or does this lean towards a balloon?

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   It would be great o find some video of birds taken from planes. Here's one of a hawk taken from a helicopter. It's probably still moving at a similar speed to the chopper though - still looks weird.
   

   
   Source: https://youtu.be/h_f7ElR3oVs?t=28s

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   Here's a good example. Look how fast the torch on the statue of liberty is flying:
   

   
   Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP4Cg5RfYUk

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   The black/white thing is not helping much, unfortunately.
   
   A bird against the open sky will most certainly show up 'warm'.
   
   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574954115001478
   

   
   
   
   However, a water surface reflects sky conditions (with a grade that also depends on the viewing angle of the observer). So it can vary.
   
   https://ubcsailbot.org/2014/12/28/using-ir-imaging-to-detect-floating-obstacles/
   

   
   Bird feathers are good insulators. When adding the cooling effect of the air flowing around a bird in flight, it's not clear if it will appear 'warm' against a background with possibly variable heat reflection.
   
   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...pictures-reveal-animals-hot-cold-secrets.html