UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Talk about a long run of lax national security. After all these decades of ignoring, they're finally shooting them down as a threat or traffic menace.

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U.S. Says It Shot Down Car-sized UFO Over Alaska
https://www.ibtimes.com/us-says-it-shot-down-car-sized-ufo-over-alaska-3666829

U.S. shoots down car-sized unidentified object flying above Alaska
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-says-it-shot-down-object-over-alaska-size-small-car-2023-02-10/
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What's your pleasure? The times you got suspended, reason: "for lying", or shall I just stick to the lie on this very page? They are on record.

 

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So are you backpeddling now? Just cite an instance where I intentionally lied about something. Shouldn't be hard if there's so many.

nevermind...I assume you mean this:

"It's a common tactic of skeptics to foist speculations as fact by claiming their speculation is more probable (read: a priori true) than any woo (read: other speculations that they disgree with)."

Do you have any evidence this is a deliberate lie I told? It's what skeptics do, presenting their speculations as facts based on their alleged higher probability of happening than other more wooish speculations. I stand by this statement.

 

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Here we go. It's The War of the Worlds.

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Seriously though I doubt they will ever be able to shoot down a real uap. Their technology is far too advanced and simply beyond our crude ballistic capabilities. There are accounts of military jets and planes firing rockets and bullets at uaps/ufos only to have them returned to them!

 

Reported, doubling down on trolling

 

I'd really like to know what they shot down over the Arctic Ocean coast of northern Alaska. From my perspective it's a UAP/UFO.

I expect that the government knows what it was. Otherwise they were shooting at things without knowing what they were, which is bad procedure and quite uncool. Hopefully it wasn't just some poor bush pilot from Barrow in a light plane with its transponder turned off. (40,000 feet is awfully high for that kind of aircraft though.)

But for some reason, they aren't saying what they know.

Assuming that the most exotic 'breakthrough technology" descriptions are actually true (big question mark there), at least some these UAPs might seemingly be capable of velocities, descents and ascents, and accelerations superior to an air to air missile.

If that's the case, we would have no way to splash them.

 

I feel that it's probably an inflatable (balloon, mini-blimp, etc) with a small, ordinary payload this time, perhaps for legit research purposes rather than spying.

But this now "shift to the paranoid" approach of Biden's might finally wean them off the "space alien" stigma and start treating invasive craft/phenomena as terrestrial and "other nation" oriented. As it should have been all along, rather than the potential (historical) slack idiocy of ignoring and letting an unidentified _X_ wander wherever it wants to on the grounds of it being embarrassing to react to or regard soberly.

Not that the defense network was apathetic on all occasions during the past, but one gets that overall impression of a blithe attitude and under-reporting by personnel, fermented by fear of ridicule.
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Now Canada whacks its own "invader". Suddenly it's open season on UFOs.

HEADS OF STATE: "Let's start shooting the ####### things down instead of gawking at them!"

Canada shoots down UFO in airspace one day after similar incident over Alaska
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-canada-shoots-down-ufo-29194487
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Yeah, I expect that's most likely what it was. (Though I must say that's speculative and I don't really know.)

Maybe they are clamming up because it really was an innocent American weather balloon, and they are afraid that they will be ridiculed for over-reacting, scrambling jet fighters and wasting a missile on it.

Yes, they will probably find it harder to shrug off reports of unidentified objects flying over the US now that it's known that foreign intelligence gathering vehicles have been successfully doing it.

The fear of career damage has certainly made military personnel reluctant to report UAP sightings. The UAP Preliminary Assessment clearly acknowledged that. Things seem to be changing and new reporting procedures have been put in place, which explains the increased number of sighting reports that they have been getting in recent months.

I'm also led to believe that while US radar coverage is very good to the north (to catch Russian bombers and missiles coming over the pole), along the east and west coasts, and presumably north of Cuba, our air defense surveillance is poorer in the southwest direction over Mexico. I wouldn't be surprised to see efforts to improve that.

 

Twitter is buzzing with word that the Billings Montana airport has been closed and aircraft routed away from it due to a "national security situation". Air Force jets have been scrambled from both the Seattle and Portland areas.

Maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing.

But combined with the spy balloon excitement, it's something that makes me go "hummm..."

Edit

And the notam directing pilots away from Billings has been lifted and commercial flights in and out are resuming.

These "national security" airspace closures can happen for lots of reasons, ranging from military maneuvers to transport of very high level VIPs (Airforce One etc.)

 

Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale says he was told by the military that "Airspace is closed due to an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic - the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning."

Apparently the US military doesn't work at night. (Union work rules.)

https://twitter.com/RepRosendale/status/1624579901608034306

I wonder if some foreign power is flooding our airspace with these things, or whether they have always been there but were ignored until the Spy Balloon goosed the military.

 

So a putative fourth object was detected, that they will supposedly wait to shoot down tomorrow morning.

With the Superbowl tomorrow, perhaps it kind of fits. As General Mike Minahan suggested, they'll likely strike when North America is distracted by something, though he selected the political turmoil of an election year. This is probably just a dry run, though.

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So, it begs the question…were other “UFO’s” shot down in past decades, but the general public was never made aware or were the other UFO’s too fast to be shot down? Or…?

It’s just strange that all of a sudden, “objects” are being shot down.

 

We should remember that this is "semi-conscious" Joe Biden. The autolaunchers in Alaska can send up as many as 24 balloons before restocking. This whole scenario may be nothing more than him losing it, as the Chinese have been mocking him in that respect.

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EDIT (addition): Since there are other players involved not afflicted with dementia, maybe we can cautiously go back to hoping he's not shooting down domestic inflatables. (Still personally straddling the fence about that, though -- it's Sleepy Joe, after all.)

U.S. Jet Shoots Down Flying Object Over Canada
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/us/politics/unidentified-object-canada-alaska-pentagon.html

EXCERPT: "There were multiple theories in Washington as to the provenance of the objects, but several Biden administration officials cautioned that much remained unknown about the last two objects shot down. The United States has long monitored U.F.O.s that enter American airspace, and officials believe that surveillance operations by foreign powers, weather balloons or other airborne clutter may explain the most recent incidents of unidentified aerial phenomena — government-speak for U.F.O.s — as well as many episodes in past years."
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Or the whole thing was just dismissed as "woo".

Things started to change with the UAP reports that spoke of hundreds of sightings, that might arguably represent a danger to commercial air traffic or even a national security threat. That stimulated further investigation.

I think that it was the Chinese spy balloon that focused their minds on the very real possibility that there are things up there in our skies that aren't exactly friendly.

That and politics. Biden was stung by criticism (including from his own party) that he'd allowed the Chinese spy balloon to cross the entire country and complete its mission before he woke up and took action. So he wants to show that he's alert, on the job, and ready to be tough. My guess is that after the Chinese spy balloon, some sharply-worded messages went out from Washington DC to military commands all over.

Just a short while ago, if a pilot in the military reported a UFO, the rest of the squadron would be wearing tinfoil hats when he walked into the briefing room the next day. It might end up a black mark on the pilot's record.

Today, there's no fucking around. If anything is detected up there, jets are scrambled and generals are alerted at the Pentagon. Very different.

 

And here we are, arguing over aliens when humans are causing all the drama.

To all of a sudden be shooting objects out of the sky that are “trespassing” into our airspace seems suspicious at the very least, and reckless at best. Not that the government is taking action, it’s that it’s suddenly taking action.

So, the fact that the tic tac flying object was not shot down, is even more intriguing…

 

Well, give it time for this new policy of violent response to spread to the acrobatic type of UFO. Maybe they could nail those, after all. Granting that Biden comes out of the current flurry of UFOs without egg on his face (i.e., shooting down research balloons of North American origin rather than foreign).

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EDIT: Even if weather balloons, they were a fail by virtue of traveling too low. Biden and Trudeau were justified to take them out, regardless of ultimate owners.

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EDIT: Apparently it's quasi-official that the possible 4th object affiliated with Havre, Montana was a false alarm. So only the Alaska UFO and the cylindrical UFO over Yukon as the "whack'em good, boys" events for the weekend (so far).
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Take it for whatever this type of stuff is worth, from these left-wing "mainstream" news agencies and their public / anonymous sources. One or both objects seem to be confusedly emerging as actual craft of some kind, rather than an inflatable with a payload. Of course, that was already hinted at via the early references of a cylindrical shape (for the Yukon object, anyway), but now they're tossing in some classic buff or Fortean aspects.

UFO interfered with F-22 sensors
https://www.businessinsider.com/obj...aska-canada-ufo-interfered-f22-sensors-2023-2

EXCERPTS: "Some of the F-22 Pilots who tracked the aircraft that was downed over Alaska yesterday said that it 'interfered with their sensors' and that 'They could see no propulsion systems on the aircraft not knowing how it could possibly be staying in the air,'" according to the public military and intelligence scanner, Open Source Intelligence Monitor.

Some of the pilots, OSIM reported, did not experience interference with their systems and could not agree on a description of the object.

[,,,] CNN reported an anonymous source with knowledge of the briefing said the pilots shared conflicting observations about the object, including that it had interfered with their systems and that they could not explain how it stayed in the air.​

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I'm guessing that there have always been a lot of things in the sky (weather balloons) and the military tracks them all and tries to figure out which few are questionable enough to check out or at an altitude where it could interfere with commercial aviation.

We hear more about it at the moment because of the Chinese balloon and the others are just the usual balloons but for some specific reasons they are currently being shot down.

Most of this isn't the kind of thing that the public would know about, need to know about, etc.

 

Okay, I'm finally getting back to your post here, and hope that it offers a bit more insight into why I don't care for West to be referenced as a resource for ''healthy skepticism.''

I've shared before that I don't ''follow'' Mick West, but have listened to him on a few podcasts since his name was first mentioned in this thread and at first glance, he isn't wrong to want hard evidence for UFO claims, as he (claims to) adhere to the scientific method. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever, and as somewhat of a skeptic myself, I don't think we should believe every eyewitness out there who claims to have seen something extraordinary and mysterious flying in the sky, without sufficient evidence.

But, Mick West comes to the table with debunking in mind...first. He doesn't believe (even though I've read that he would ''love to believe that Big Foot and aliens exist'') that some of these flying objects could have extraordinary explanations. There may be an extraordinary explanation for the tic tac flying object for example, but if your mind is made up before you're even made aware of any possible evidence, then you'll always debunk claims to suit your bias.

Dare I say, you'll move the chess pieces of ''evidence''around to look like you've done some serious assessment of the claim, but it's somewhat lazy and manages to convince average skeptics who think like him. I don't think for what it's worth, that you are the ''average skeptic;'' you are much more thorough when it comes to your analysis of what MR posts, for example. West is nowhere near as analytic as you, and some of the others in this thread, but he tosses out enough crumbs to look like he put a lot of time, effort and thought into his analysis. For example, in one of his videos ''debunking'' the tic tac video, he goes on about how there could be a glare to account for the odd movements of the moving object. If there's a glare, there is still an object of some sort that is giving off this ''glare.'' His explanations are sometimes sillier than ''it's space aliens!''

I'm of the opinion that Mick West is biased, in the same way that UFO enthusiasts (who are always looking for aliens as the reason behind UAP's) are biased, and in my opinion, this causes him to be too dismissive. Why not just say ''we don't know what this [UFO] could be, but we'll rely on incoming data to determine what it could or couldn't be.'' I'd just be happy if West stopped assuming what it could be.

It's blindly believed by his following that his reason for being a debunker is that he sticks with science, and if there isn't sufficient evidence, he's going to consider the case closed. That would be fine, if it were true. My observation of West's analysis is that he comes to the table refusing that UAP's aren't ever mysterious, and that they all have a mundane explanation. That's the problem I have with using West as a solid resource for skeptics. Yes, he's skeptical, and he may have his reasons, but his bias is what leads in part to his skepticism, and he dresses it up by portraying himself as a scientist only seeking the truth.

You can choose to rely on his opinions, and he's not out there saying anything dangerous to be clear, but bias can blind a person. It can close your mind and cause you to think narrowly about all kind of subjects. Now that he's making a name for himself in the ''skeptic'' arena on the subject, he has yet another reason to make sure that he debunks every UAP claim. He's like the equivalent of the show ''Ghost Hunters,'' where every mysterious sound, vision, and shadow must have a paranormal explanation, and they ''debunk'' any possible mundane explanations. It can be entertaining to watch, but if you're biased towards believing in ghosts, then the show may serve as an educational experience.

Healthy skepticism is great, and we should all view these UAP claims with a healthy sense of skepticism, but it's no longer healthy skepticism when you deny eyewitness testimony because it doesn't match with your biased opinions of UAP's. You're right though, there is not enough evidence to make conclusions, but he and many skeptics never give the observer credit in what he/she may have witnessed. That's something I've noticed with most debunkers - every eyewitness was either drunk, tired, hallucinating or flat out making stuff up, so they're not to be believed that what they saw was truly something ''unidentifiable.'' And there is also a stigma among skeptics that when the term ''UAP'' is brought up, that they're determined to prove it's not space aliens. But, there could be other mundane, yet extraordinary possibilities out there. West prefers we don't explore those, at least that is what I've gleaned from his website/videos.

I agree, and replied to this snippet of your response a few posts back. I've learned from you and others here, how to better explain myself, as no one is a mind reader. And things can get lost in translation on forums, so it's necessary to be clear.