Unidentified/Phantom Drones & UAPs

[ººº]

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

Aaaaaand another one...what is happening?

UFO scare?

[firestar464]

Govt denies extraterrestrial activity

https://apnews.com/article/china-us-hig ... 2c7b8b04fb

[erowind]

.

[ººº]

Manufactured consent to keep some spectacle in the news cycles.

This.

[Vakanai]

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.

Contact at a small scale with a few individual humans who are then trusted with secrecy would still yield more representative results of the human condition if Alien researchers took interest in average humans not our abstracted institutions.

This all only applies to advanced species though. If a small primitive alien seedship or drone appeared in our orbit and landed somewhere (or were retrieved by our governments) it is possible that our governments would keep the entire ordeal secret on purpose. Aliens at comparable levels of advancement to ourselves who for whatever reason have the drive to build interstellar ships would be vulnerable to our governments overpowering them, especially if they didn't travel with weapons for some reason or another and didn't expect to find anyone here on Earth to begin with.

This is assuming that such aliens are interested in cultural studies. We can't possibly know that they would or wouldn't be. For one, we can't know how an alien intelligence would think, so can't begin to know what it would prioritize. Just because we might value cultural studies doesn't mean they would, or would or would not base their contacts upon such. For another, any species advanced enough to reach us would have technology so advanced they wouldn't need to contact us to study us - they could have satellites as far out as Jupiter perhaps that takes better pictures and videos than our satellites closer to home. They could have an AI sort through our entire internet, and have it so intelligent to sort through the misinformation to get at the actual facts. It could have nanbots so small we mistakes them for dust reading every book in every library along with every peer reviewed journal in academia.

I don't know if I believe we're being visited by aliens or if we ever have been, but if we are (and that's a big if) then I'm going to hazard a guess that any species capable of making the distance of lightyears is going to be so technologically advanced as to seem godlike next to our abilities. So they wouldn't likely need to resort to the same tactics human anthropologists have to when they wish to make a cultural study.

I also doubt they'd contacted our world leaders, assuming they exist and have visited us, but that's more because I doubt world governments could keep a secret of this magnitude for this extent of time. They can keep big secrets, like the Manhattan Project, they can keep long secrets like the development of stealth, but I'd need much more to believe they can keep a secret that's bigger than the A bomb for perhaps a half century or better.

[Vakanai]

(is there a multi-quote function I'm unaware of?)

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

Aaaaaand another one...what is happening?

I saw on the news that they explained that after the Chinese spy balloon incident that NORAD shifted their radars to better focus on higher altitude slow moving objects. So the reason we're seeing more of these objects is because we've taken steps to more actively look for these kinds of objects.

[Vakanai]

3 reasonable possibilities.

State actor of some kind.

This is my suspicion, with a strong leaning towards them being from China just like last week's balloon.

[ººº]

(is there a multi-quote function I'm unaware of?)

Scroll down when writing or quoting a post. You should find all coments with a button saying "“" at the top-right.

[Vakanai]

(is there a multi-quote function I'm unaware of?)

Scroll down when writing or quoting a post. You should find all coments with a button saying "“" at the top-right.

Yes, that's the quote function, but it seems to only be to quote one post at a time, not for multi-quote functionality. Or am I missing something?

Edit: Oh I see, you have to already be in the midst of quoting and then it adds that to current quote. Thank you!

[firestar464]

So the most plausible explanation is that there is an uptick in reports due to improvements in data collection. I wonder if these will become regular occurrences, and I hope the elimination of these oddballs can allow us to focus on studying UFOs that are more likely to be paranormal.

[caltrek]

Balloon-Like Object Closed Down Moldova’s Airspace Next To Ukraine Today
by Thomas Newdick
February 14, 2023

Introduction:

(The Drive) Moldova briefly closed down its airspace earlier today, following reports of what was described as a balloon-like object over the country, close to the border with Ukraine. The incident came less than 24 hours after Moldova accused the Kremlin of plotting to bring down its government and amid reports that Russia is making use of decoy balloons launched over Ukraine, to confuse its radars. At the same time, much of the North American news cycle, at least, is gripped by coverage of high-altitude surveillance balloons and other unidentified aerial objects.

Moldova’s civil aviation authority said that it took the decision to close the country’s airspace after receiving a report from the defense ministry that a small object had been seen over the north of the country. The object was described as being similar in appearance to a weather balloon and an unverified video shows what looks like a metallic, highly reflective object glinting in the sunlight.

“Given the weather conditions and the impossibility of observing and identifying the object and its flight path,” Moldovan airspace was closed, the civil aviation authority said in a statement. Once it was determined that no threat existed, the airspace was reopened after 1 hour and 22 minutes.
…
Moldova’s neighbor Romania also reported that it had detected a small weather balloon in its airspace today, and it scrambled two MiG-21 Lancer fighter jets (as seen at the top of this story) to investigate. The pilots were unable to confirm whether the object was still there. Moldova, unlike Romania, no longer operates any combat aircraft, with just a handful of transports and helicopters currently in use.

Read more here: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ ... ine-today

[firestar464]

Okay, so it's Putin this time.

[caltrek]

^^^Apparently.


I came here to post the article below from Vox. I think some of this was covered in the old forum as a lot of the history goes back that far. At any rate, it seems very familiar.


Everything We know About UFOs We Learned from Congress
by Li Zhou
February 14 , 2023

Introduction:

(Vox) The mysterious downing of three unidentified flying objects over the weekend has renewed attention on an issue that Congress has become increasingly interested in over the last few years: the presence of UFOs, also known as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).

Since 2020, a growing chorus of both Democrats and Republicans have emphasized the need to study and track UAPs, which can include everything from drones to other unknown aerial items, as a potential national security threat. Those calls have only grown louder after the military shot down the latest objects, which were detected in US airspace after a Chinese surveillance balloon was identified in early February. At this point, the White House has said that it doesn’t believe the unidentified objects have extraterrestrial origins.

Lawmakers’ scrutiny of UAPs burst into public view in 2022. Last May, the House held the first hearing that it’s had in 50 years on the issue, featuring testimony from military officials who presented video and images that service members have captured of different aerial objects. Past reports of UAPs have included sightings of objects that have “unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” raising questions about whether they could have extraterrestrial ties, though officials say they haven’t found evidence of such connections.

Over time, Congress’s focus on UAPs has become more mainstream as lawmakers like former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed to make it a priority. In 2007, Reid helped secure $22 million in funding for a Pentagon program to study UFOs and UAPs, dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politic ... veillance

[caltrek]

Biden: Those Three Aerial Objects We Shot Down Probably Aren’t Spy Balloons
by Arianna Coghill
February 16 , 2023

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) President Biden on Thursday, in his most detailed remarks addressing the recent spate of aerial objects that were shot down over North American skies, said that there is no evidence tying the three unidentified objects to foreign surveillance programs. Officials, however, are still working on confirming the exact details of the objects and their provenance.

“The Intelligence agency’s current assessment is that these three objects were balloons tied to private companies, recreational groups, or research institutions,” Biden said in a brief televised address. The president also defended shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon earlier this month, a dramatic action that has since inflamed tensions between the two countries.

“We seek competition, not conflict with China. We’re not looking for a new Cold War,” Biden said. “But I make no apologies and we will compete.”
Since taking down the objects, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have demanded answers. But in recent days, there has been growing consensus that they were likely benign in origin, almost certainly not evidence of aliens, and perhaps even belonging to hobby groups simply enthusiastic for “pico balloons.”

“We acted out of an abundance of caution and with an opportunity that allowed us to take down these objects safely,” Biden said on Thursday.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... -objects/

[firestar464]

So the Chinese balloon was not a spy balloon? If that's what the article is saying, this is a huge L for the US govt

[caltrek]

So the Chinese balloon was not a spy balloon? If that's what the article is saying, this is a huge L for the US govt

No. Biden is referring to three subsequent objects, not to the Chinese balloon. Here is a citation, this one from Courthouse News, that confirms my point:

WASHINGTON (CN) — One week after his administration announced it would explore retaliation avenues against Beijing for what it said was a surveillance balloon with proven ties to the Chinese military, President Joe Biden distinguished that event from the three subsequent objects shot down in recent days.

Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/aerial-o ... iden-says/

Thanks for the question to give me the opportunity to clarify.

[firestar464]

https://apnews.com/article/politics-uni ... 860849495f

They're picking up the stuff now

[peekpok]

I do think that the probability of alien visitation is higher than most people give it credit for. It's a pet peeve of mine when people say that its "extremely unlikely" that aliens would visit Earth based on our understanding of technological lifeforms of which we have a sample size of one (ourselves). Our telescopes are not good enough to see another technological civilization that mirrors our own even in the closest star systems (until JWST anyways), so whether or not they're out there, we couldn't tell either way.

On the other hand, a civilization that evolved thousands of years before us (but more likely millions or even billions of years) within the Milky Way could be fully aware of the fact that there is life on Earth (from the atmospheric composition) and already sent probes here. These post-singularity devices would be equipped with ASI and seem godlike to us.. perhaps not all that different from the strange sightings reports that have happened in the last 70 years.

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

https://www.livescience.com/alien-mothe ... l-suggests

Alien mothership lurking in our solar system could be watching us with tiny probes, Pentagon official suggests

A draft paper by a Harvard scientist and the head of the Pentagon’s UFO office has raised the idea an alien mothership could be in the solar system, sending out tiny probes dubbed "dandelion seeds" to explore the planets within.

Could an alien mothership be hovering around the solar system, sending out tiny probes to explore planets? According to a Harvard scientist and a Pentagon official, it’s possible.

In a draft paper, the pair said it is feasible an extraterrestrial spaceship could be in our galactic neighborhood, exploring the region by the means of “dandelion seeds” — small spacecraft that can gather and send back information, similar to the way humans send out spacecraft to explore planets.