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From Neanderthal times to our times fantasy has given comfort and allowed humans to cope with the vicissitudes of life. Threatened by a terrible virus and with a culture at war with it self, UFO's allow folks to decide that there is something more powerful and has magic powers. This ache for UFO truths will fade as the country goes back to work. As for Russian or Chinese drones, we do the same, we have pestered our friends and enemies for a long time.

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Being seen and being caught are two entirely different things which the author interchanges as if they weren't. Why would beings who know humans could never catch them care whether they're 'caught' on camera. Really, why would they or should they? And having been around Naval aviation a long time, I can tell you tracking and targeting systems, radar. FLIR, MAD gear ad the like are not designed to produce high quality visuals, FA-18s are not Hollywood film equipment. They are engineered to perform the specific task at hand and only that task integrated into a flying platform which barely has the space and allowances to accommodate that. Then there's the visual take and confirmation of professionals whose job it is to scrutinize and evaluate any such entity entirely objectively. Navy and Marine aviators rely on this because the consequences of doing so, or failing to, hold life and death implications for them and their fleet. If such professionals say they saw what they saw, particularly in a scenario where multiple folks concur with one another about what was seen, you can bet your bottom dollar it's what was there. As for the defense budget angle, why have they waited 70 years to play this card? There have been several periods of much tighter DoD purse strings than exist today and no such maneuvering to hoodwink Congress into greater funding by leveraging the UAP angle has ever been made, nor am I aware of any such argument being raised now in light of this newly released information.

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"...a self-serving national security establishment working with a credulous and lazy media to manipulate public opinion for its own ends."

What an absurd and irrational statement.

The government is often accused of hiding evidence of unidentified phenomena and rumors of the existence of these kinds of videos fuels conspiracy theories. So in this instance, instead of fighting the access to information requests they said, "here, have a look". And of course, a rational analysis of these videos really shows that there really is nothing that unusual about them - just some blurry images of easily explainable optics and trigonometry.

Now that they've done that, it fuels another conspiracy theory. Aha! Evidence of wanting to boost military budgets through fear mongering. Gimme a break!

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This is a great post, thanks for putting all of this in one place. One relevant point not made is that all of the experts who know the guts of the sensor systems in question are legally prohibited from discussing what they really know. If the thermometer in your bedroom says it 8 million degrees, either you've defied all known physical laws, or your thermometer is broken. But all of the thermometer experts can't just come out and say: "oh yeah, the 8 million degree thing, we've known about that for a while".

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Vox I consider to be one of the most trust-worthy and reliable news sources, I decided to search up UFO and aliens, the results I got (title and quotes from the article):

- It’s time to take UFOs seriously. Seriously: "Alexander Wendt is one of the most influential political scientists alive. Here’s his case for taking UFOs seriously."

- John Podesta's top regret on leaving the White House is he didn't reveal the truth about UFOs:

- The new American religion of UFOs (extremly pro UFO article and makes xeno-archeology sound like archeology): "I was shocked to discover the level of scientific inquiry into extraterrestrial life ... I had no clue that there were actually people at top universities that were studying these things on their own, that there was a whole underground network of people doing the same work, and that there was much more to this than most people imagine."

- That was no flare 90,000 UFO sightings combined into one awesome map: "I don't believe that aliens exist, but let's say I did and they come in UFOs — and let's assume you believe in them, too. This map is one of the best data visualizations I have seen in my entire life." (okay bud you don't believe in them)

I don't see any negative articles on the subject, you don't usually see this for bonkers shit or most conspiracy theories (other then russiagate)

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That these UFO releases are likely intended to justify costly DOD silliness like Space Force and such. Now that big bombers that carry nukes have become more of an airshow weapon than of any significant military use, it is worth noting that the USAF only independent mission is land-based ICBMs. Even that mission is rapidly being absorbed by more stealthy Navy submarine-launched ICBMs. Otherwise, Navy and Army already have tactically-useful air forces.

An alternative explanation for the evidence is that what we have been seeing are indeed spy drones - not necessarily foreign either. That would explain the frequent retreat and death-defying G-forces. If I wanted to avoid capture, I might send my small drone full-throttle straight for the ocean (esp if it was submarine launched in the first place) or do a quick 180 in order evade detection. Even my spouse's $800 toy drone can do that. But if one were to assume the object was a big manned aircraft, such maneuvers would be impossible - duh. My spouse's drone can fly straight up turn 90 degrees, then 180 in an eyeblink - no alien tech needed. Then there is the shopworn spoofnology that our fighter aircraft use when they have an enemy missile locked on them - shoot some reflective e-junk into the air to distract its radar (glowy things confused as UFOs by cameras).

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How can anyone take this writing seriously? There's the usual lazy hand waving at 1 expert (lol) and some hokey pokey lazy attempts at incriminating the military. The so-called video expert has no pilot training and claims the tic tac object is... get this...no wait, you're not going to believe this... a BIRD. A bird that can outpace an F-18! UFO debunked guys! Don't worry it's just a new ultra-fast bird with supersonic capability! LOL Did the author even watch the video?

If you don't trust the military, then why don't you watch and actually study the mountains of crystal clear video evidence of UFOs submitted DAILY from non-military people who have nothing to gain from reporting this phenomena?

Here's the counter to the debunking video with the pilot's explanation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBt4CNHyAck&ab_channel=LexClips

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Of course, UFOs are real!

UFO Video: 
One of the World’s Best UFO Videos 
(Aerial Footage) – 
Tokyo, Japan – Unknown Date 
(Recorded by NHK, Japan’s State Broadcaster)

Source: TV UFO Footage.

This is one of the world’s best UFO videos, in my opinion.

The unknown object (white light) which flies slowly over Tokyo – is first seen in the upper left corner of the screen.

When the UFO is closest to the helicopter camera, one can see the body of the large elongated (or circular) UFO, and that it has large red and white pulsating lights (4 lights). The colours of the three blinking/pulsating lights varies between white and red. The largest light (white) does not pulsate.

The UFO seems to stop near the Tokyo Tower for a short while. It appears that the NHK camera operator notices the UFO, because the camera follows the UFO for a short while.

The fact that the video comes from Japan’s state broadcaster means that it is unimpeachable.

The footage comes from NHK World TV’s Aerial Tokyo channel, aired on 13 April 2022, at approximately 7:00 p.m. CET. This channel can be found in the German TV app, TV PRO.

Original video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAzNygeNOlY

Zoomed video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBVkgxy5yqU

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Jun 27, 2023·edited Jun 27, 2023

Musk's graph could be explained as aliens probing less aggressively as our detection capabilities advance: they had their run of the skies until we invented radar in 1935 and have had to progressively dial back their activities since then. This is analogous to how the US flew less U2s after the Soviets demonstrated an ability to shoot them down.

I don't really believe that explanation. The Chinese balloon disaster confirmed that to me - we can barely detect low-tech devices if they're in a sufficiently weird part of the atmosphere - it seems unlikely we could detect presumably way higher-tech ones.

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It's all pigs. Pigs in space. Pigs coming too earth. They will take over, once all the dolphins have left.

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There's actually good reason to think the military *does* have a "UFO" problem -- just that the UFO's it's having a problem with are not operated by E.T. the Extraterrestrial, but by adversary states -- and pilots have been reluctant to report on encounters, because of the career-threatening stigma. Tyler Rogoway at The Drive had a fairly compelling look at this last month: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos

This may not answer what Commander Fravor and friends ran into in 2004, but if all Marco Rubio's rider accomplishes is to force the DoD to start taking adversary drones seriously, it will have been worth it.

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Been saying! Just because we don't know what these 'sightings' are, it doesn't mean they have to be ETs.... Of course, they could be down here replenishing their stock of Reese's Pieces... Seriously... When you've seen a photo of the illusion of a massive Cruise Ship floating 30 feet above the ocean, then you really have to doubt silly bad photos of 'things' zipping around.

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This is another one of these crises that is a pretext for Agenda 2030 - The global plan for a one-world government. You have climate change - which requires global cooperation to solve; then Covid, which requires global cooperation to solve; now you have Alien invasions also which requires global cooperation to solve. What's next?

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"think the “Russian bounty” story meant to keep the US in Afghanistan"

Speculation on your part. The existence of these bounties is still debated.

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I've begun to take UFO claims more seriously once Robin Hanson at overcoming bias began to take it more seriously

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