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Magical Realist said:
Strange craft flying in formations:
One of the commenters at YouTube pointed to the Lockheed Martin Cormorant, as well as a DARPA project that, technically, the Cormorant isn't part of.
They're not Cormorants specifically, but the idea of a DARPA project to release UAVs from submarines, "falling upward" to the surface, and then launching, doesn't stretch my imagination at all. In fact, I think it's really, really cool.
And one need not run with the falling upward notion; there are so many UAV variations right now, the most likely thing is that they're drones we haven't seen, or don't often see.
While the project page is gone from the DARPA website, the
archived version still exists.
I'll go with terrestrial-developed aircraft not widely known.
Drone LTA vehicle.
Various clips of strange objects:
(1) Colorado Springs, CO: Flares. This reminds me of a more spectacular display in ... Arizona, I think ... when similar lights were seen in a horizontal line. Additionally, I would remind that it
is Colorado Springs.
(2) Apple Valley, CA: Flares again.
(3) Lubbock, TX: Not sure what it is, but this looks like reflected light.
(4) Ciudad Juarex, Mexico: LTA drone.
(5) United Kingdom: Honestly, my guess is that it's a piece of a military rocket. While most people pay attention to big project launches (even I caught the news of ISRO's awesome boost of a dozen satellites in one shot in February), few are aware of various launch tests. I have no idea how to find the British military launch schedule, especially if they don't want people knowing what they're launching, but I do know that NASA routinely launches rockets that are never intended to make orbit. Rather than a flare, as this object looks too big, it looks like a piece of a rocket tumbling to the ground. I would even suggest a piece of orbital debris having decayed to re-entry. I just don't know enough about what was going on in the Terran sky on June 8, 2012, to point to a specific event. It is also worth mentioning that despite the description in the video, that's not an "orange sphere".
(6) Colorado: They're describing an "arched cloud"; very well, it's a natural phenomenon. However, the closeup
did recall the idea of military LTA vessels, a set of contracts that aren't quite working out, but still have a lot of potential. (I like the idea; consider trying to land a big cargo jet in the middle of a disaster zone, and then consider setting a LTA capable of carrying a huge payload onto the ground, or even hovering low over flooding land in order to deploy. I don't recall if it was the sequester itself, or typical budget and testing problems, but I heard about this recently only because a contract was facing cancellation. Unfortunately, LTAS, one of the promising startups for this idea, is now in the hands of WSGI, or, World Surveillance Group Inc. To the other, LTAS was apparently fairly small, as the buyout price was a massive stock transfer plus $250k cash.)
(7) Melbourne, Australia: Hoax. I couldn't tell you what you're looking at, but that's the point. What I can't figure out is what that camera is supposed to be looking at. It's not a wildlife camera, as there is no evidence of ground or foliage. It appears to be a camera with a night-vision capability pointed somewhat toward the sky (straight up, or what angle?) and, according to the note, left unattended. Why the hell would anyone do this? What were they looking for? The light exaggeration destroys any chance of determining what that object is. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they're just flying R/C hobby aircraft over the camera. But whatever it is, it's planned, if not outright staged.
(8) Edge of Space: "Edge of Space"? What does that even mean? Again, this is the sort of footage that is intended to create a ufo question; without knowing anything about what part of the sky over what part of the planet we're looking at, there is no way to begin diagnosing this oddball footage. For all I know, I could be looking at video taken through a microscope, with small particles or organisms moving across a petri dish.
(9) Fort Myers, FL: Aircraft. I can't cite it for you, but I've seen the phenomenon before, back in the late '90s, where zoom creates that diamond effect. Meanwhile, Fort Myers is on the west coast of Florida, with MacDill AFB in Tampa, and Air Station Clearwater (USCG) a hundred miles to the north.
(10) Lake Okeechobee, FL: Can't really tell anything about the motion of the object, which is clearly an aircraft of some sort.
(11) Sävedalen, Sweden: The only thing I question is what they mean by "ufo". See my note after the enumerated analyses.
(12) Bounces off the Sun: Oh, for .... Okay, first of all, what telescope is taking this footage? Secondly, what, exactly, is the threshold for "ufo"? I mean, first of all, that "ufo", if it "bounces off the sun" is the planet-sized. Additionally, the stillframes don't even suggest a solid object. And even if we want to ignore those points, we have no data telling us about the telescope. I have no idea where this image is taken; it's almost like they're deliberately screwing with ufo/EBE believers, tyring to see just how outlandish they can get before the faithful finally call bullshit.
(13) Australia: This one is actually pretty cool, but no analysis can be performed without more information. I could not tell you whether that is "real" or a hoax. As in, perhaps there is an aircraft or "spaceship" there, or maybe it's just a model. I do know that governments have been trying for a while to build flying saucers, and Pine Gap, Australia, which is claimed to have "a natural dimensional doorway", whatever that means, is a hotbed of ufo/EBE speculation down under. Some even consider it an American military base intended to hide our evidence of ufos and EBEs. As a matter off fact, the close-up still image looks kind of like a ceiling light fixture.
(14) Shenzhou 9: This is another one where they're just dicking people around in order to see what the true believers will swallow. Shenzou 9 was an historic mission, the first manned flight to dock with Tiangong 1, and also the inclusion of the nation's first female astronaut. Now, of course, it is necessary to secure airspace around the launch site from press and other interlopers who could accidentally (or, I suppose, deliberately) screw up the launch, but it would also be an extraordinary assertion that the Chinese government wasn't flying aircraft around the launch zone for both security and spotting purposes.
(15) Highland, UT: Only a ufo insofar as it is impossible to tell what kind of terrestrial aircraft is dropping the flares.
(16) Universal City, CA: I like that one. It's nostalgic. I haven't seen one of those things in ... thirty-five years? But, yes, the opening frames remind me of something I saw flying over a rodeo with adverts on it when I was a kid, ca. 1977-78. The rest of the footage is too poorly shot to actually get a good look at the object. To the other, just judging by its color and fluidity, I'm going to go with some sort of balloon that has lost its tether. (I once tracked a "ufo" from my living room in the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle for over a half-hour, until I was able to confirm with my own eyes that it was just a dying weather balloon.)
(17) London, UK: They're either screwing with people, or else incredibly stupid. That's an LTA something or other.
(18) Palatine, IL: LTA.
General Notes: The website pushing that video is also still pushing the Gulf Breeze sightings from 1987. Of course, they're also linking out to sites like Jalopnik, which in this case was mocking a crazy ufo sighting. Indeed, I'm going to go with the provocateur idea on that entire reel. These guys are just baiting true believers.
A commenter to the YouTube video noted, "The only fact we know is that everyone has crappy cameras!!!" Another wondered, "why can no one ever hold their camera still in these?" And those are fair questions.
In the days before digital cameras, ufo footage was actually a little bit better. For instance, the one thing I didn't see in there is the classic bright dot moving oddly in the sky and then zooming off as if the pilot engaged the warp drive. We used to get a lot of those from Groom Lake spotters.
The strange thing, though, is that the proliferation of digital cameras and distribution through the internet has not produced better sighting records. Indeed, they've gotten worse.
Allow me, please, to make my ufo/EBE position clear:
I am as confident as intuition allows that there is life elsewhere in the Universe. Indeed, I can point you within a couple thousand miles where to look. In the question of intelligent life, that we might communicate, trade, or even fight with, I am fairly confident that it exists somewhere in the vast Universe. However, the clear preponderance of evidence has utterly failed over the last sixty-six years of the modern ufo notion to produce anything remotely convincing.
Back when I joined Sciforums (Exosci, 1999), I was still a fairly anxious want-to-believe sort. The internet age has eliminated any hopeful proposition that "They are here". As fortean phenomena have become ever more popular a media product, the quality of the record has crashed into what seems a bottomless abyss.
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Notes:
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "Cormorant Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV)". April 13, 2006. Web.Archive.org. August 10, 2013. http://web.archive.org/web/20071007053407/http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/cormorant.htm
WSGI. "World Surveillance Group Acquires Defense Contractor Lighter Than Air Systems". April 1, 2013. Press Release. MarketWire.com. August 10, 2013. http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...ghter-than-air-systems-otcqb-wsgi-1773645.htm