U.S. Senate bill wants detailed report on all UFO activities and calls for the creation of UAP Task Force:
"Advanced Aerial Threats
The Committee supports the efforts of the Unidentified
Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval
Intelligence to standardize collection and reporting on
unidentified aerial phenomenon, any links they have to
adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to
U.S. military assets and installations. However, the Committee
remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive
process within the Federal Government for collecting and
analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena,
despite the potential threat. The Committee understands that
the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the
Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination
across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and
this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders.
Therefore, the Committee directs the DNI, in consultation
with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of such other
agencies as the Director and Secretary jointly consider
relevant, to submit a report within 180 days of the date of
enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and
armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena
(also known as ``anomalous aerial vehicles’’), including
observed airborne objects that have not been identified.
The Committee further directs the report to include:
1. A detailed analysis of unidentified aerial
phenomena data and intelligence reporting collected or
held by the Office of Naval Intelligence, including
data and intelligence reporting held by the
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force;
2. A detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data
collected by:
a. geospatial intelligence;
b. signals intelligence;
c. human intelligence; and
d. measurement and signals intelligence;
3. A detailed analysis of data of the FBI, which was
derived from investigations of intrusions of
unidentified aerial phenomena data over restricted
United States airspace;
4. A detailed description of an interagency process
for ensuring timely data collection and centralized
analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting
for the Federal Government, regardless of which service
or agency acquired the information;
5. Identification of an official accountable for the
process described in paragraph 4;
6. Identification of potential aerospace or other
threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to
national security, and an assessment of whether this
unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be
attributed to one or more foreign adversaries;
7. Identification of any incidents or patterns that
indicate a potential adversary may have achieved
breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put
United States strategic or conventional forces at risk;
and
8. Recommendations regarding increased collection of
data, enhanced research and development, and additional
funding and other resources.
The report shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may
include a classified annex."
This statement is a good thing. If these events are fully investigated then the results need to be publicised. But they need to get the details right.
It seems quite apparent that these events actually do have mundane causes, and Mick West and others have made very good progress in attempting to discover what these causes are. But in many cases the data is only partially available, and sometimes not available at all.
For instance the ‘descending traces’ mentioned earlier in this thread were observed on many occasions, then stopped. Were these traces ever explained? Did the radar system have some glitch that was then put right? Or was it operating error? Perhaps we will never know, because this sort of detail exposes the capabilities and shortcomings of defence technology. But a simple ‘we know what this was’ might suffice.
Similarly the two clips known as GIMBAL and GOFAST are currently undated, and no accompanying details are available. Were these training flights? Were the phenomena explained at the time? The fact that one of them is labelled GIMBAL when it shows a phenomenon associated with the FLIR gimbal system may be significant here - it seems to be a demo showing the sort of effects one might expect when using the FLIR to follow a target at an extreme angle.
The people at TTSA are currently promoting these clips and other events as if they indicate absolute proof of alien incursions. This is far from the case, and this misapprehension could only be corrected by much greater openness with the data, and the opportunity for competent investigators to look at this material in detail.
I like this. That each of their targets were actually intentionally part of the testing. Following a balloon as they fly past at high speeds sounds exactly like the kind of simple test run they’d do.
Senate approves Bill that calls for a detailed report on all UFO activities happening in the US. Senator Rubio hopes UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin:
This is going way back in the thread, but I think it’s an important point to make:
No, what we think we know is pretty much what we do know.
It’s important to appreciate how we know things. It’s not about a bunch of smart guys using their gut feeling, then making proclamations.
We make models that allow us to make very accurate predictions and even technology based on our understanding.
What we know might only be a tiny piece of everything that there is to know…but nonetheless we can still have a lot of confidence in our tiny piece.
I somewhat agree with this.
Not that we’re wrong about the fundamental speed limit c. But when people declare things impossible, often they make a lot of implicit assumptions.
Although an Alcubierre drive is likely impossible in our universe, the fact that it would be possible if our universe had exotic matter, negative mass, and we could harness fantastic amounts of energy, show already that there might be framings where c can be sidestepped.
So I personally would not even rule out FTL. Of course, if we find FTL to be possible, that would make the fermi paradox even more puzzling.
You missed that he was talking about maybe people will someday figure out how to travel at hypersonic speeds low in the Earth’s atmosphere without compressing the air they pass through into a shockwave. Which will happen at exactly the same time they figure out how to shoot a bullet through someone without causing a bullet wound.
The only way I can imagine getting through an atmosphere without causing a shockwave would be to travel some sort of short-distance wormhole or quantum-tunneling effect, so that you literally do not exist between location A and location B.
But if you could do that, you would not be visible in transit, or leave a radar trace in that region. So all the reports of high-speed manoeuvres must be wrong.
Over and over again, movie clips of fast-moving distant objects gave been shown to be slow-moving, nearby objects such as insects and birds. Not to mention the innumerable fakes. To a very fast-moving object, the atmosphere is like a brick wall - you need to break through, which would cause a ruckus.
I did indeed miss that.
I would say though (and hear me out) I would also put that in the bracket of things that might actually be possible.
Let me be clear. I would bet my life savings, and possibly my life, that images of UFOs are not extraterrestrial in origin; I would sooner believe I have three hands and Ive just counted wrong all these years.
But, if we’re speaking abstractly about what a craft made by a species the equivalent of a million years more advanced than us could make…I don’t see it as fundamentally impossible that some method of pushing air molecules around such that they are back “at rest” (i.e. just with thermal motion) after the process couldn’t be found. It doesn’t have to break entropy, it could be stupendously energetically wasteful.
Let me recommend a book, “The UFO Experience”, written by Dr. J. Allen Hynek. Hynek had impressive credentials, having been in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio State where he rose to full professor in 1950. In 1956, he left to join Professor Fred Whipple, the Harvard astronomer, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which had combined with the Harvard Observatory at Harvard.
Interestingly enough, he was originally a UFO skeptic, which is why the Air Force engaged him as their chief scientific consultant for Project Sign, the precursor to Project Grudge and the far more famous and well known Project Blue Book. Since the Air Force’s job is to protect our sky, they were charged with the distasteful duty of dealing with the whole mess, and they wanted someone who could debunk the phenomenon and lay it to rest. Being a skeptic, Hynek was only too happy to oblige.
Ironically, the more he studied the phenomenon, the more he came to believe that, although 90+% of the claims could be explained or written off as nonsense, there were a number of them that had real and undeniable substance. That is why he decided to write the book.
A warning: Because of his effort to approach the subject as scientifically as possible, the first 1/3 of the book is extremely dry. As he gets into the reports he feels are worthy of merit, the book becomes much more interesting.
Trouble is, every time these sightings have enough evidence to be analysed scientifically, they are explainable. The FLIR1, GOFAST and GIMBAL films are the best evidence anyone’s come up with yet, and they are very likely to be mundane craft or other objects, not even acting in particularly odd ways.
J. Allen Hynek may have been intrigued by some of the Blue Book cases, but the evidence was very thin, and since that time it has become apparent that you really can’t take eye witness testimony at face value.
