Unidentified/Phantom Drones & UAPs

[Yuli Ban]

Here's a thread dedicated to all those unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings people have had, especially those that are actually drones or satellites misidentified.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are triggering a “UFO” craze

Around the world, social media users are reporting seeing a mysterious row of bright lights gliding across the sky — which many claim to be UFOs. Exciting as it may sound, it’s likely something far less exciting: a chain of Starlink satellites developed by Elon Musk’ SpaceX.
Last week, Starlink launched its latest wave of 52 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It has already launched more than 600 of its 12,000 planned satellites, usually set off in batches of 60. They are usually described as “megaconstellations” because they are a group of satellites moving together.

I can 100% understand why people would misidentify these. These really do look ethereal and otherworldly going up.

However I like to think of them as a good example of what a flying car highway would look like IRL more than UFOs.

[Yuli Ban]

Now that I can easily access to the old forum again, I'll repost some of these old stories:

From 2014:
Drones Causing Worldwide Spike In UFO Sightings

There was once a time when UFO sightings turned out to be easily identified objects like weather balloons, lenticular clouds, satellites, meteorites, planets, conventional aircraft, weather anomalies and other normal things.

Now, here come the drones, the newest addition to the growing list of misidentified things in the sky that many people claim are ships from another part of our galaxy. (Watch the HuffPost Live video above)

Here's the big problem with all of this: Not only do these unmanned objects look like UFOs or flying saucers, a lot of them are deliberately and inexpensively created to look like UFOs or flying saucers.

[Yuli Ban]

2019–20 Colorado drone sightings

The 2019–20 Colorado drone sightings were a series of widely sighted possible unidentified drones observed in the skies of northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska between December 2019 and January 2020. According to witness reports, the
drones flew in grid formations in groups of up to 19 and were visible at
night between 6 and 10 pm. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), FBI, and local law enforcement investigated the sightings, but have not yet
determined the operator of the drones. Flying drones at night without a
waiver from the FAA is a violation of federal law.

 

[Yuli Ban]

Drones that swarmed U.S. warships are still unidentified, Navy chief says

Drones that hovered around U.S. destroyers for hours off the California coast remain unidentified
more than a year and a half after the episode, the Navy’s top officer
says.
Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, spoke about the July
2019 flights Monday at a Defense Writers Group event in Washington.
Gilday said the incident — and other similar sightings — were still
being assessed.
 
Asked if the Navy had identified the drones that flew near U.S. warships
near the Channel Islands off Southern California, Gilday said: “No, we
have not.”

[Ozzie guy]

I suspect it is China.

[Yuli Ban]

What’s Inside the Pentagon’s Long-Awaited UFO Report

One of the many curiosities packed into the $2.3 trillion omnibus spending and coronavirus-relief package passed by Congress in December was a stipulation requiring the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to deliver an unclassified report on unidentified flying objects to Congress within six months, compiling what the government knows about about UFOs rocketing around over American airspace. The long-awaited first report was finally released on Friday, and though only nine pages, represents the most direct and substantive U.S. government account of of what officials call unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) ever made public. Below is a guide to what the report contains for those who want to believe — or at least understand what there is to learn from this unprecedented act of transparency from the Pentagon.

What information is the report based on?
The Pentagon task force’s preliminary assessment is based on the review of 144 UAP reports involving observations made by military aviators between 2004 and 2021, but mostly from the last two years. The task force also considered but opted not to focus on “a range of information on UAP described in U.S. military and IC (Intelligence Community) reporting,” since it “lacked sufficient specificity.”

Of the 144 reports, the task force could only determine an explanation for one (a deflated balloon). The rest remain unexplained.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Ukraine’s Astronomers Say There Are Tons of UFOs Over Kyiv

It describes a specific type of UFO the researchers call “phantoms” that is an “object [that] is a completely black body that does not emit and absorbs all the radiation falling on it.” The researchers also observed that the UFOs it’s seeing are so fast that it’s hard to take pictures of them.

“The eye does not fix phenomena lasting less than one-tenth of a second,” the paper said. “It takes four-tenths of a second to recognize an event. Ordinary photo and video recordings will also not capture the [unidentified aerial phenomenon]. To detect UAP, you need to fine-tune the equipment: shutter speed, frame rate, and dynamic range.”

So the researchers did just that using two meteor monitoring stations in Kyiv and Vinarivka. “We have developed a special observation technique, taking into account the high speeds of the observed objects,” the paper said. “The exposure time was chosen so that the image of the object did not shift significantly during exposure. The frame rate was chosen to take into account the speed of the object and the field of view of the camera. In practice, the exposure time was less than 1 ms, and the frame rate was no less than 50 Hz.”

Using the cameras, stationed roughly 75 miles apart, allowed the scientists to make repeated observations of strange objects moving in the sky. The paper didn’t speculate on what the objects were, merely noted the observations and mentioned the objects’ incredible speeds. “Flights of single, group and squadrons of the ships were detected, moving at speeds from 3 to 15 degrees per second,” the research said. “Phantoms are observed in the troposphere at distances up to 10 - 12 km. We estimate their size from 3 to 12 meters and speeds up to 15 km/s.”

Traveling at Mach 43??

[Yuli Ban]

[Vakanai]

I've actually seen ufos twice before, but I still don't believe that they're extraterrestrial. I'm not going to dismiss the possibility that some ufo sightings are alien in nature, just that I believe mine were earthly in origin. Many ufo sightings in past decades after World World II turned out to be stealth aircraft that the U.S. government and others kept secret, and it would only make sense that many sightings today are also of experimental and advanced aircraft governments don't yet want made public. Never mind the rise in commercial drones and corporate satellites is adding further misidentification to the mix.

Still there are some sightings like those leaked and released from the Navy that don't fit these patterns and seem difficult to explain. The triangle I saw flying once and then hovering in the distance is easy to place with what our military industrial complex might secretly be capable of, but the so called tic-tacs reported by trained jet pilots pose a more serious mystery. I still fall on the side that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but there's enough evidence to show that something is clearly going on beyond just commercial drones and starlink satellites. Now whether this is ET or some government leapfrogging what we think we understand about aerodynamics and all modern aircraft capabilities, or some astronomical or meteorological phenomena we know nothing about but is completely natural, requires further study. But it's fascinating either way, and I'm glad we're exiting the old era of dismissal and denial and actually looking into this very real phenomenon whatever it pans out to be.

[caltrek]

NASA Announces the Team Who'll be Studying Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Data. It's a Pretty Impressive List
by Matt Williams
October 28, 2022

Introduction:

(Universe Today) In June, NASA announced that it had commissioned an independent study team to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) from a scientific perspective. Last week, NASA announced the members of the independent team that will study observed events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or natural phenomena. These sixteen individuals, a collection of scientists and researchers from premier institutions across the U.S., will analyze all possible data sources that could help NASA and other agencies learn more about this phenomenon.

Until recently, the study of UAP was a matter of national security and air safety pursued exclusively by government and military agencies. However, since the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its report last year (aka. the UFO Report), it has become the subject of scientific research. However, scientists require access to extensive sets of data to verify and explain observed events. Therefore, the focus of the study is to inform NASA about possible data sources that could discern the nature of UAP.

The team began their work on Monday, October 24th, and will spend the next nine months laying the groundwork for future studies of UAPs by NASA and other organizations. This will consist of the team reviewing how data gathered by government, commercial, military, and other entities (which has since been declassified) can be analyzed to learn more about UAPs. This team will then prepare a series of recommendations for UAP data analysis to NASA and a full report of its findings for the public (to be released by mid-2023).

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said in a recent NASA press statement:

• “Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA. Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable.”

The article goes on to name individual members of the team.

Read more here: https://www.universetoday.com/158358/n ... ive-list/

[Yuli Ban]

[peekpok]

The world of UAP news is a little bit spicy, as usual. Did you all know that last years NDAA mandated by law that the ODNI must deliver a report to congress summarizing their yearly analysis of UAP sightings? That report was due on October 31st, but was never delivered. The report is now 30 days late!

I don't know what to think but it certainly has dumped fuel on the fire for all kinds of conspiracy theories.

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-say ... 023-02-10/

Hmmm...

[erowind]

.

[firestar464]

Some alien empires might be altruistic, but then again, they'd rather just talk directly to your average person as opposed to our institutions. There may be species that got here by accident or did not expect anyone here, who would definitely want to hide (similar to what was already said above). The only reason I can think of why they would be advanced and sneaky about it is that they do not have good intentions.

[Cyber_Rebel]

Aliens observing us or otherwise visiting the planet is something that could turn out to be true.

However, any conspiracy that aliens have made contact or vice versa with our governments are completely false. Any species advanced enough to make it to Earth with such advanced aircraft or AI controlled drones wouldn't tolerate the culture of our governments at all. There'd be nothing to gain for them in terms of cultural studies by only talking to world governments and world governments wouldn't be cooperative with them either. Making contact at at any moderate scale would have an incredible effect on our species regardless of what humans are contacted. It follows that any contact would be public, notorious, and prioritize equal interaction with any given human on purpose because otherwise any data collected would be of low quality (due to unrepresentative samples) and still violate any prime directive if they have one.

Well, that's the optimistic view. I'm not saying I believe in said conspiracies, but we really don't know what the nature of an actual spacefaring civilization will be like until we actually make contact with one. It's entirely possible that most spacefaring civilizations are post singularity machine ones, considering we are advancing that field faster than space travel, it may be a necessity of evolution before we reach that point.

Depending on just how advanced they would be, it's a possibility they simply wouldn't care about us at all. Imagine if they've already observed dozens or even hundreds of primitive civilizations and governments, we'd just be another drop in the vast ocean.

Assuming that there is anything to this UAP phenomenon, and it all isn't just the U.S. being coy about their drone programs or unrevealed inventory, I'd agree that it's most likely scientific drones sent to observe a primitive species, in the same way we observe animals right now.

. The only reason I can think of why they would be advanced and sneaky about it is that they do not have good intentions.

Starfleet from Star Trek is advanced and sneaky because of their prime directive, which prevents interference in primitive civilizations so as to not adversely affect their natural evolution. If you're that advanced or even more so, then what purpose would it serve to make contact with a less advanced species? I really don't think we can judge any interstellar type of civilization with human eyes or perspective.

[caltrek]

What’s Inside the Pentagon’s Long-Awaited UFO Report

...

Of the 144 reports, the task force could only determine an explanation for one (a deflated balloon). The rest remain unexplained.

I am not saying that balloons explain all the sightings, or even a majority. Still...

WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — A U.S. military fighter jet shot down an object flying over Alaska, national security officials announced Friday afternoon, emphasizing that the action was taken out of an abundance of caution and to safeguard against interference with civilian flights.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, noted at a press conference that there is no conclusion yet as to what the object is, who it belongs to, or what it was doing — only that it had been tracked for the last 24 hours hovering 40,000 feet above Alaska.

Just 24 hours earlier, the State Department released its preliminary findings about the giant Chinese surveillance balloon that another U.S. military jet had shot down off the coast of North Carolina after a weeklong cross-country flight.

Kirby noted that the object over Alaska “was much, much smaller than the spy balloon we took down last Saturday,” estimating the size of the latest object as comparable to that of a small car. He said last week's balloon that has been traced to the Chinese military meanwhile was about “two or three bus sizes."

No pilot was manning the device Friday, Kirby said, adding that “it did not appear to have the maneuverable capability that the other one did; it was at the mercy of the wind.

Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/days-aft ... er-alaska/

caltrek's comment: Most likely, balloons cannot be the explanation for objects that report flight characteristics that greatly exceed that of a balloon. Although optical illusions created in part by balloons could even be a factor.

[firestar464]

https://apnews.com/article/united-state ... b40ce1cb5a

Aaaaaand another one...what is happening?