UFOs

[Stevek76]

No, they don't. You need a model of what they are in order to convert eg visual or radar observations into acceleration. That would include properties such as how big they are and how *far away they are. And for the vast majority of observations those data are not available.

* As with sheep.

Have you seen the 'tictac' sighting that two naval jet fighter pilots encountered in 2004 :- https://youtu.be/ZBtMbBPzqHY

Yes.

They don't know what those are. And I don't know what those are.

From roughly 3 mins in, the first is very likely just some slow moving small object (like, a bird) with a fast moving background due to parallax effect from the jet moving and the camera locked to the object.

2 is just something that's flashing and/or glinting, the flashing pattern actually looks rather like a normal plane's to me. The only reason it's that triangular shape is because it's out of focus and the camera has a three blade aperture, the chimney and some other light points also have the same triangular nature.

3? Could be anything really, there's no background to reference against and when, later in the vid, it just 'zips off' looks entirely to me like it just reached the gimbal limit of the camera, particularly in the way it wobbles sightly (because the aircraft itself is not 100% steady)

The fourth is just something over exposing a thermal camera (for whatever reason, almost all of these cameras seem to go back to the opposite end of the display spectrum in such circumstances so if whiter is hotter it will show black when the sensor is overloaded). The shape of it is just abberations from the lensing, the way it rotates in relation to the plane reorientating is quite characteristic and should be quite familiar to anyone who's idly messed about observing how such abberations and flares behave with a camera. The movement against the clouds is just more parallax and the object is likely just something reflecting the sun.

Without any actually convincing video footage it is hard to take the pilots' accounts with much merit.

[reohn2]

.......Does von Daniken have any fans here?

I'm no fan,he seems to have cobbled together a pile of stuff which made 5.Shyster some would say.

PS,it's a long long time since I read any of his books,so don't ask me to answer any searching questions on them,they all seemed a bit half baked to me.

[reohn2]

Have you seen the 'tictac' sighting that two naval jet fighter pilots encountered in 2004 :- https://youtu.be/ZBtMbBPzqHY

Yes.

They don't know what those are. And I don't know what those are.

From roughly 3 mins in, the first is very likely just some slow moving small object (like, a bird) with a fast moving background due to parallax effect from the jet moving and the camera locked to the object.

2 is just something that's flashing and/or glinting, the flashing pattern actually looks rather like a normal plane's to me. The only reason it's that triangular shape is because it's out of focus and the camera has a three blade aperture, the chimney and some other light points also have the same triangular nature.

3? Could be anything really, there's no background to reference against and when, later in the vid, it just 'zips off' looks entirely to me like it just reached the gimbal limit of the camera, particularly in the way it wobbles sightly (because the aircraft itself is not 100% steady)

The fourth is just something over exposing a thermal camera (for whatever reason, almost all of these cameras seem to go back to the opposite end of the display spectrum in such circumstances so if whiter is hotter it will show black when the sensor is overloaded). The shape of it is just abberations from the lensing, the way it rotates in relation to the plane reorientating is quite characteristic and should be quite familiar to anyone who's idly messed about observing how such abberations and flares behave with a camera. The movement against the clouds is just more parallax and the object is likely just something reflecting the sun.

Without any actually convincing video footage it is hard to take the pilots' accounts with much merit.

What of the first hand accounts by US navy pilots?

[Mike Sales]

What of the first hand accounts by US navy pilots?

It occurs to me that military pilots' job is to look out for flying objects. It would be understandable if they interpreted obscure sightings as flying objects. They would be in trouble if they dismissed a peculiar phenomenon as nothing much but it turned out to be an incoming enemy.
Odd flying things are what they are looking out for, and it is safer to err on that interpretation.

[reohn2]

What of the first hand accounts by US navy pilots?

It occurs to me that military pilots' job is to look out for flying objects. It would be understandable if they interpreted obscure sightings as flying objects. They would be in trouble if they dismissed a peculiar phenomenon as nothing much but it turned out to be an incoming enemy.
Odd flying things are what they are looking out for, and it is safer to err on that interpretation.

These people are highly trained individuals who know what's what and are trained to be able to distinguish what from what.

[Stevek76]

Re pilots accounts

Without any actually convincing video footage it is hard to take the pilots' accounts with much merit.

That they're trained is what leans me towards thinking there's some bad faith/shameless publicity going on.

I particularly struggle to see how elements such as the parallax motion and targets 'zipping off' because the camera ran out of turning range would catch them out.

[[XAP]Bob]

We know from hard experience that being trained mostly helps us to see things that we were trained to spot.

[reohn2]

We mustn't trust the experts then,eh?

[Mike Sales]

These people are highly trained individuals who know what's what and are trained to be able to distinguish what from what.

The US Air Force has a bit of a reputation for killing the wrong people. Their euphemism is "friendly fire"!

Here are some.

Gulf War

26 February 1991: Six British soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and ten members of the attached Company of Queen's Own Highlanders were killed and further three injured after their Warrior armoured vehicles were hit by Maverick missiles fired by two U.S. A-10 ground attack aircraft.[3] An Oxford inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killings.[4]
27 February 1991: Two British soldiers of the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars were injured when their Scorpion armoured vehicles were fired on and hit by U.S. M1 Abrams tanks.[3]

Iraqi no-fly zones

14 April 1994: Two British officers were among the 26 Coalition personnel killed in the 1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident caused by two USAF F-15s.

From a list of British victims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... sh_victims

"Highly trained"?
"able to distinguish what from what"?

[reohn2]

Mike Sales
So are we now to condemn all US pilots as blind idiots who can't see what's before them because of a one or two who've made mistakes in the heat of battle?

[Mike Sales]

Mike Sales
So are we now to condemn all US pilots as blind idiots who can't see what's before them because of a one or two who've made mistakes in the heat of battle?

No, not all US pilots, but a frequent enough occurence to destroy any argument which relies on those pilots as trained and acute observers.

The list I linked to gives British victims, and is rather more than one or two. A list of all nationalities hit in error would probably be much longer. I would think that all air forces are guilty of such fatal mistakes.
There are estimates of pilot errors between the extremes of "blind idiots" and infallible observers.

[reohn2]

Mike Sales
So are we now to condemn all US pilots as blind idiots who can't see what's before them because of a one or two who've made mistakes in the heat of battle?

No, not all US pilots, but a frequent enough occurence to destroy any argument which relies on those pilots as trained and acute observers.

The list I linked to gives British victims, and is rather more than one or two. A list of all nationalities hit in error would probably be much longer. I would think that all air forces are guilty of such fatal mistakes.
There are estimates of pilot errors between the extremes of "blind idiots" and infallible observers.

You simply cannot use that argument* against two pilots(one of which was a 'Topgun' flight leader and instructor)and their observers in reletively none stressed flying situation off their home coast who(according to their story backed up by radar)observed a 'tictac' shaped object and interacted with it for a matter of minutes.

Have you any idea of the risk of ridicule in reporting such an encounter within the Navy and people under their command?

It's either all four people onboard the two aircraft saw something that cannot be explained and therefore(to use the US terminology)Unknown Ariel Phenomena or someone's extracting the urine.Not recognising it as known aircraft of somekind doesn't stack up in the circumstances IMHO.

Some of the UFO/UAP sightings are unexplainable without doubt,where they're from and who they belong to,is a mystery not yet solved.
I find it a giant leap of whatever for people to posit they're intergalactic travellers come to visit(for whatever reason),but until an explaination is found I find it an equally giant step to claim that because some US pilots in battle to mistake friendly vehicles for the enemy and fire on them it follows that all US military pilots are therefore idiots that can't spell 'A' or know their arris from their elbow.

There's a lengthy interview on YT with the lead pilot in the encounter I'm referring to here's the shortened version :- https://youtu.be/5HInaJxFxWs

As for the giant leap in believing there's extraterrestrial life 'out there' here's Michio Kaku's take on it :- https://youtu.be/-dvT6SWdWUk


*without particular circumstances of such mistakes,I'm in no way defending those pilot's mistakes but there must be a back story other than pilots firing on anything that moves.

[Mike Sales]

Mike Sales
So are we now to condemn all US pilots as blind idiots who can't see what's before them because of a one or two who've made mistakes in the heat of battle?

No, not all US pilots, but a frequent enough occurence to destroy any argument which relies on those pilots as trained and acute observers.

The list I linked to gives British victims, and is rather more than one or two. A list of all nationalities hit in error would probably be much longer. I would think that all air forces are guilty of such fatal mistakes.
There are estimates of pilot errors between the extremes of "blind idiots" and infallible observers.

You simply cannot use that argument* against two pilots(one of which was a 'Topgun' flight leader and instructor)and their observers in reletively none stressed flying situation off their home coast who(according to their story backed up by radar)observed a 'tictac' shaped object and interacted with it for a matter of minutes.

Have you any idea of the risk of ridicule in reporting such an encounter within the Navy and people under their command?

It's either they all four peole saw something that cannot be explained and therefore(to use the US terminology)Unknown Ariel Phenomena or someone's extracting the urine,not recognising it as known aircraft doesn't stack up in the circumstances IMHO.

Some of the UFO/UAP sightings are unexplainable without doubt,where they're from,who they belong to is a mystery not yet solved.
I find it a giant leap of whatever for people to posit they're intergalactic travellers come to visit(for whatever reason),but until an explaination is found I find it an equally giant step to claim that because some US pilots in battle to mistake friendly vehicles for the enemy and fire on them it follows that all US military pilots are therefore idiots that can't spell 'A' or know their arris from their elbow.

There's a lengthy interview on YT with the lead pilot in the encounter I'm referring to here's the shortened version :- https://youtu.be/5HInaJxFxWs

As for the giant leap in believing there's extraterrestrial life 'out there' here's Michio Kaku's take on it :- https://youtu.be/-dvT6SWdWUk


*without particular circumstances of such mistakes,I'm in no way defending those pilot's mistakes but there must be a back story other than pilots firing on anything that moves.

Just as you are understandably reluctant to discuss individual incidents of friendly fire, I am not going to get into arguing about individual UFO sightings.
|I think, though, it is plain that highly trained pilots can make mistakes, especially when operating a complex aircraft.
Some of those risk ridicule, and others risk lives.
As I said at the beginning of this discussion, more terrestial explanations of UFO sightings, however unlikely, are much more likely than extraterrestial visitors.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Edit.
On researching the origin of that last quote I find that it is more apposite than I knew.

The Sagan standard, according to Tressoldi (2011), "is at the heart of the scientific method, and a model for critical thinking, rational thought and skepticism everywhere".

ECREE is related to Occam's razor in the sense that according to such a heuristic, simpler explanations are preferred to more complicated ones. Only in situations where extraordinary evidence exists would an extraordinary claim be the simplest explanation

The aphorism was made popular by astronomer Carl Sagan who used it in the 1980 television show Cosmos in reference to claims about aliens visiting Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard

[reohn2]

Just as you are understandably reluctant to discuss individual incidents of friendly fire, I am not going to get into arguing about individual UFO sightings.

I'm not reluctant at all,these things happen in stressful situations where personel add 2+2 and come up with 5 then the mistake is made and the US military seem have reputaion in that regard.

|I think, though, it is plain that highly trained pilots can make mistakes, especially when operating a complex aircraft.

Watch the interview I linked to.

Some of those risk ridicule, and others risk lives.

There's risk to life in many,many situations,it's at what level the risk.
It's undeniable that mistakes are made when operating machinery,in high stress situations mistakes are more likely.
Once again I'm not saying that some people are more likely to make mistakes than others,that's a known fact.

As I said at the beginning of this discussion, more terrestial explanations of UFO sightings, however unlikely, are much more likely than extraterrestial visitors.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

There are many fanciful claims to UAP/UFO sightings,however there are some that simply cannot be explained,it's those that are open to close inspection and further investigation.
The US government has finaly after 70+years come clean and admitted that some UAP/UFO sightings can't be explained and puzzle the militeat the highest level.

[Mike Sales]

There are many fanciful claims to UAP/UFO sightings,however there are some that simply cannot be explained,it's those that are open to close inspection and further investigation.
The US government has finaly after 70+years come clean and admitted that some UAP/UFO sightings can't be explained and puzzle the militeat the highest level.

Absence of explanation is a long way from the extraordinary evidence required.
It seems to me infinitely more likely that these so far unexplained phenomena have an explanation other than extraterrestial visitors.
I believe that there are other things that science has not yet understood. I do not think that these other phenomena license suggesting unknown, unlikely explanations.
Extraterrestial visitations as an explanation require so many complicated and extraordinary suppositions that they fall foul of Occam's razor.