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Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects—NY Times

Kingsize Wombat

Justified & Ancient
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Jan 19, 2016
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Seems like an update to Leslie Kean's December 2017 story - not much new in there, though.

WASHINGTON — The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014, a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were videotaped, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching.
“Wow, what is that, man?” one exclaims. “Look at it fly!”
No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. Lieutenant Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said in interviews with The New York Times that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance.
But the objects have gotten the attention of the Navy, which earlier this year sent out new classified guidance for how to report what the military calls unexplained aerial phenomena, or unidentified flying objects.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/...ngs-navy-pilots.html?save=nyt-gateway-stories
 
This seems new:

"The pilot and his wingman were flying in tandem about 100 feet apart over the Atlantic east of Virginia Beach when something flew between them, right past the cockpit. It looked to the pilot, Lieutenant Graves said, like a sphere encasing a cube. "
 
That might be a drone; the others could be birds, or distant aircraft. The FLIRs on F18s seem to be prone to misidentifying both, although they should have fixed that by now.
 
That might be a drone; the others could be birds, or distant aircraft. The FLIRs on F18s seem to be prone to misidentifying both, although they should have fixed that by now.
I just have a bit of a hard time believing that fighter pilots would confuse those, not to mention the speed and altitude at which these things were observed.

That doesn't make me scream "ALIENS!!!" at the top of my lungs, but it does make me think something odd is out there.
 
That might be a drone; the others could be birds, or distant aircraft. The FLIRs on F18s seem to be prone to misidentifying both, although they should have fixed that by now.
An object flying between two fighter planes that are 100 feet apart is extremely unlikely to be a drone, whether civilian or military.

The military wouldn't do it due to collision risk, and they also confirmed no military drones were in the area. And no civilian vehicle is going to be within that range without them knowing about it, since carrier operations areas are off limits to civilian traffic for security reasons (including the risk the fighters will blow you out of the sky should you get too close to the carrier).
 
I just have a bit of a hard time believing that fighter pilots would confuse those, not to mention the speed and altitude at which these things were observed.
Military pilots are not infallible. The three videos that were released by TTSA a year ago are very difficult to analyse, and seem to have completely defeated both the pilots of the planes that took them, and the analysts from TTSA that were supposed to have looked at them. By carefully modelling the speed of the planes and the effects of parallax, the people at Metabunk have shown that these three videos probably show one bird and two distant planes.

I am fairly confident that any videos released in the future will also be good evidence for this sort of error. In fact I think that the use, or misuse of this sort of imaging equipment is a factor in many miltary UAP sightings, since it interposes a layer of interpretation between the outside world and the observer. Imaging equipment was used at Rendlesham in 1980, and seems to have misled the observers on the second night into misidentifying Venus as a stationary spacecraft 'sending down beams'. Imaging equipment was used by the pilots at Tehran in 1976 and may have led them to misidentify Jupiter at various points. Additionally, I suspect that the pilots in the Nimitz case may have subconsciously changed their recollections after they viewed the tapes after the incident- several of the details they describe would only have been visible through the FLIR, so they either were watching the display during the flight or afterwards- either of which could have coloured their perceptions.

Imaging technology is a useful tool- but it can also be deceiving. Luckily, it can sometimes produce a permanent record which can be analysed later.
 
I just have a bit of a hard time believing that fighter pilots would confuse those, not to mention the speed and altitude at which these things were observed.

That doesn't make me scream "ALIENS!!!" at the top of my lungs, but it does make me think something odd is out there.


That's how I interpret it, too. I'm not one to leap to the conclusion of an alien craft. This could easily be some kind of natural phenomena which simply hasn't been encountered before. But I do find it unlikely that pilots who fly these planes daily, for a living, would be duped by a glitch in their flight equipment.

Whatever these incidents were they happened in a specific region over a set time period, and stopped as soon as they left the area. If it was a technical fault only then you would expect these things to have turned up again. To our knowledge they never did.
 
But I do find it unlikely that pilots who fly these planes daily, for a living, would be duped by a glitch in their flight equipment.
We have documentary proof that they were, from the videos released by TTSA. Pilots can't be expected to fly their planes and simultaneously flawlessly interpret signals from imaging equipment which is known to display false positives. Bear in mind, as well, that on training flights some of these pilots are new to to the technology.
 
We have documentary proof that they were, from the videos released by TTSA. Pilots can't be expected to fly their planes and simultaneously flawlessly interpret signals from imaging equipment which is known to display false positives. Bear in mind, as well, that on training flights some of these pilots are new to to the technology.

But multiple times? From multiple flights?
 
Absolutely. At least three times, on separate occasions, since the TTSA clips all occured on different sorties.
 
Remember, there have been visual sightings in addition to cloaked craft that have only been seen with the new equipment. Not surprisingly, they move and appear like UFOs from the '40s and '50s. There are apparently many other videos that have not been released too; I think swamp gas, birds and glitches aren't the issue.
 
https://issues.org/ufos-wont-go-away/

"Meanwhile, according to testimony from Petty Officer Gary Voorhis, who was stationed on the Princeton at the time of the episode: “At a certain point there ended up being multiple objects that we were tracking. That was towards the end of the encounter and they all generally zoomed around at ridiculous speeds, and angles, and trajectories and then eventually they all bugged out faster than our radars.”

The entire episode, which lasted between five and seven minutes, was monitored on the Princeton’s Command Information Center, according to an unpublished paper that analyzes the incident, authored by a group of longtime UFO researchers, several of whom have scientific backgrounds and careers in the semiconductor and aerospace industries"
 
^Just released video 'documenting' this event. There's a bit more to the events than in the below description.
"Meanwhile, according to testimony from Petty Officer Gary Voorhis, who was stationed on the Princeton at the time of the episode: “At a certain point there ended up being multiple objects that we were tracking. That was towards the end of the encounter and they all generally zoomed around at ridiculous speeds, and angles, and trajectories and then eventually they all bugged out faster than our radars.”

The entire episode, which lasted between five and seven minutes, was monitored on the Princeton’s Command Information Center, according to an unpublished paper that analyzes the incident, authored by a group of longtime UFO researchers, several of whom have scientific backgrounds and careers in the semiconductor and aerospace industries"

There's a lot that can be critiqued about the production, but it is clear to me that these men, experienced veterans, are sincere. I agree with the posters above. Something happened which was not a tech error, not a radar shadow, everything they experienced was non-routine. These guys (by their own admission) all signed NDDs.

However, why have they not been prosecuted for breaking theeir oaths? US Forces don't just let claims of coverups slide and ignore non-disclosure breaches. The radar tech looks pretty burned out and they're all very gung-ho, typical US military vernacular "given the go to shoot shit up"etc. The super-dramatised production - music and sound effects, it all serves to diminish credibility IMO. Entertaining video, yes, but the cynic in me sees a mouth candy commercial and little else in this regard.

On the other hand, I dare to suggest if there is anything to their shared experience and others of this form, I would think its someone fucking with their consciousness. Maybe military projects, or it could be something outside what current perceptual horizons allow - a dimensional mental incursion directed by who knows what. Yeah, I know it sounds woo, but I don't dismiss the possibility just because our language can't handle the strangenesses reported in Charlie Fort's canon.

Terms like supernatural, metaphysical, magic, ufo, these all produce a knee-jerk reaction which only serves to provide mockery fodder for the unthinking dismissives among us, a group I used to advocate and play along with. There are so many common human experiences that are simply not language-shaped, from a human communication point of view. That's not to say that it will always remain thus, but it will while we voluntarily adhere to such terms. Even nouns like The LAWS of Physics are bestowed with such authority that nobody, at least in academia, is brave enough to admit that science has hit a wall in regard to its capacity to account for these types of outliers.

Anyway, there's more to this than pilot error or tech glitches. I'm going to do my best to open up my native tongue to these outliers. That's my life goal now. Time to get back to my Pinker and Chomsky.
 
Short interview with ex Navy pilot Cmdr David Fravor - one of the pilots involved in the incident - who talks about what he witnessed.

He's clear that there was something 'real' & inexplicable. As to what..


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="
" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
The other thing of note in there is that the aircraft carrier was sent to the Persian Gulf for combat operations while these events were taking place, meaning the military felt they were sufficiently ready to be sent into combat, and not fresh out of navy school.
 
https://www.space.com/ufo-sightings-us-pilots.html
"Lt. Ryan Graves, an F-18 pilot, said in the documentary that a squadron of UFOs followed his Navy strike group up and down the eastern coast of the U.S. for months. And in March, 2015, after the Roosevelt was deployed to the Arabian Gulf, Graves said the UFOs reappeared."
 
Note that the Nimitz incident (as I keep repeating) happened in 2004. and is not connected with the 2015 incidents mentioned in the OP
(except by dint of the fact that they were using similar equipment, so probably made similar mistakes).
 
Absolutely. Pilots make these mistakes because they are trained to expect nearby aircraft that might present a threat, rather than distant meteors or high-flying birds.
 
So the Tic-Tac UFO was a bird? The others meteors? similar sightings and experiences in the past, weather balloons, more high-flying fast birds or reflections? Just defining your position before more stuff comes out.
 
The Nimitz Tic Tac video was a distant plane, as can be clearly seen by the angle it subtends with respect to the F-18.
The 'Go Fast' video was a bird, and ironically was the slowest object of the three. The Gimbal clip shows another distant plane. In each case the pilots have misjudged the distance and speed, due to parallax effects.

Here's a long list of pilot's mistakes, compiled by Jim Oberg.
http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/may/m05-002.shtml
 
I welcome the disclosure of new information, since it will quite probably show just how often these mistakes are made. Almost certainly we will be in this condition for the duration of our own lifetimes, since there is not any 'smoking gun' evidence to be had, nor will there ever be. One day we will contact real extraterrestrials (with any luck), and they will be just as puzzled about our sightings as we are.
 
The Nimitz Tic Tac video was a distant plane, as can be clearly seen by the angle it subtends with respect to the F-18.
The 'Go Fast' video was a bird, and ironically was the slowest object of the three. The Gimbal clip shows another distant plane. In each case the pilots have misjudged the distance and speed, due to parallax effects.

Here's a long list of pilot's mistakes, compiled by Jim Oberg.
http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/may/m05-002.shtml
Thanks for the clarification on your position! And the Gimbal clip is plane exhaust? They supposedly have more videos. Even Oberg can't come up with some reason to discount the Tic-Tac encounter, correct? And the object that was described as a cube inside of a translucent sphere that pilots flew past?
 
I welcome the disclosure of new information, since it will quite probably show just how often these mistakes are made. Almost certainly we will be in this condition for the duration of our own lifetimes, since there is not any 'smoking gun' evidence to be had, nor will there ever be. One day we will contact real extraterrestrials (with any luck), and they will be just as puzzled about our sightings as we are.
Well, you have taken a hardened position on these things, eh? We'll see. All of this from birds and misidentification.. Pentagon program really a cover for the Audubon Society? :)
 
Thanks for the clarification on your position! And the Gimbal clip is plane exhaust? They supposedly have more videos. Even Oberg can't come up with some reason to discount the Tic-Tac encounter, correct?
The Tic Tac video is easy to account for, but the encounter itself is more difficult, since it includes the testimony of David Fravor, who was on a different (earlier) flight. In order to explain Fravor's account, we have to assume that he has made a number of errors in his observation and recollection. Since there is no film from his flight it is not easy to find out what he actually saw.

And the object that was described as a cube inside of a translucent sphere that pilots flew past?
No film for that one, either, but I suspect that they did not get a very good look at it, especially if it was travelling in the opposite direction.
 
The Tic Tac video is easy to account for, but the encounter itself is more difficult, since it includes the testimony of David Fravor, who was on a different (earlier) flight. In order to explain Fravor's account, we have to assume that he has made a number of errors in his observation and recollection. Since there is no film from his flight it is not easy to find out what he actually saw.

No film for that one, either, but I suspect that they did not get a very good look at it, especially if it was travelling in the opposite direction.
Well, it is certainly important to be skeptical about unknown things, and you seem to have an excellent grasp of the science and other possibilities. I hope something comes out that will be more conclusive for you and others.
 
No film for that one, either, but I suspect that they did not get a very good look at it, especially if it was travelling in the opposite direction.
There was a very similar incident --I think in the early '90s; two American fighter pilots flew past a stationary object that looked like a softball-sized walnut, stationary in the air. I think they even made a second pass at it to confirm.. There is a YouTube video about it, and I posted it on the other forum. If I can find it, I'll post it.
 
From: http://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/1947-july-ufo-alien-sightings/

Here's the Tic-Tac, in 1947!
Date: July 4, 1947
Location: Seattle, Washington
Time:
Summary: Photo by Frank Ryman. Coast Guard yeoman took first known photograph of UFO, a circular object which moved across the wind. Photo shows round dot of light. [UFOE, VII, XII]
1947-july-4-washington-ufo.jpg

Source: [Other sightings at 1:05, 4:30, 5 p.m.] (Hynek UFO Rpt pp. 100-2; McDonald 1968; FOIA; Bloecher 1967

Also, pics were taken during Operation Mainbrace, one of which wad released; it's the T T again.
 
Here two F-18s ..er P-51s attempt to intercept a Tic-Tac ..er "translucent washtub". No dice.
"That is for the people to guess at":

img (42) (3).jpeg

The Evening Standard
(Uniontown, Pennsylvania)
19 Sep 1950, Tue
 
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