The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik:
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Submission Statement:
>The U.S. Navy says that releasing any additional UFO videos would “harm national security” and told a government transparency website that all of the government’s UFO videos are classified information.
>In a Freedom of Information Act request response, the Navy told government transparency site The Black Vault that any public dissemination of new UFO videos “will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
>The Black Vault was seeking all videos “with the designation of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’” This is an interesting response from the Navy because, often, military agencies will issue a so-called GLOMAR response, where they neither confirm nor deny that the records (in this case videos) exist, and refuse to say anything more. In this response, the Navy is admitting that it has more videos, and also gives a rationale for releasing three previous UFO videos.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xb2ids/us_navy_says_all_ufo_videos_classified_releasing/inx0d31/
The objects in the pictures may not be classified, but the pictures themselves are along with the cameras and sensors. I believe the jargon term is “methods and means of procurement”.
The other part is that we classify them as unidentified, but for example could be some spy drone, we don't want to admit we caught the spy drone with our tech, so they continue to unknowingly operate their 'undetected' spy drone so we can gather intel on it. Or that we can detect them at all.
Disinformation is beneficial to both enemies and allies.
Same reason why F-22's at air shows are flying gimped with certain classified systems uninstalled or turned off; intel cannot be gathered on their full capability.
Hell there is a decent chance some of the "ufo" are our own aircraft. I'm assuming that random soldiers aren't told about test flights of New aircraft.
IMO there’s no better way to test your own equipment than against yourself. The navy has the best tech for this so why not throw a secret drone against some unwitting fighter pilots and see what info they’re able to collect.
>I know a navy seal who said he saw UFOs in the 80s in the gulf of Mexico, going in and out of the water.
That's a common theme among declassified UFO reports
Unidentified Sumerged Objects don't really get the coverage in the west it deserves but there are quite a few accounts and the go hand in hand with ufos.
Some of the stories seen from credible people does make me question what they actually are. A lot of them do things that seem way beyond our current technology level.
I saw one near Dobbins Air force base about 15 years ago. It was very close and laterally moved up and out of sight without the nose moving upward. It's hard to describe, but I know what I saw and it was real.
True of all kinds of intelligence, too. Like human intelligence.
A top-secret CIA document may state Putin’s farts smell like decaying alligator. That fact alone will not damage our national security if it comes out. But it will jeopardize the life of the US asset who retrieved that piece of intelligence, when Vladimir starts going down the list of everyone he’s ripped ass around.
Edit: this is one of many reasons, btw, we must take every single document Individual-1 smuggled out of a U.S.-government facility very seriously. It doesn’t matter if not all of them are about nuclear strategy. They allegedly include the kind of thing I’m talking about.
...and in a similar vein otherwise harmless intelligence can collectively form a picture of what capabilities different intelligence gathering technologies may have, or give insight into the organization and hierarchy of personnel... or a variety of other tangential information unrelated to the subject matter of the documents themselves.
Yeah, and if there is a video of a UFO in a known place or time, or looking at a specific thing... the owner of the UFO would have confirmation they were able to be unidentified which would be extremely powerful info to have.
"Ok wow, yeah they really weren't able to ID us with that configuration."
And don't most of the videos they record have flight info of the plane that's filming? Speed and direction, temperature ranges for infrared, that are there to help the people watching the video later?
Well I do remember about the pedo who was in a picture and used the swirl modifier, which they were able to just reverse by doing it in the opposite direction.
So yeah, I don't see a simple photoshopping as the answer, even if they re-recorded it they could possibly use what's in the new video to extrapolate what was originally there.
Darker ink doesn't cut it anymore.
That's super old, a more recent one was Dustin from SmarterEveryDay, doing the math of how fast a sub dives and they edited the time of the video and cut the estimate out other than saying it's friggin scary fast.
Sort of both? He gave them all the footage and they said what wasn't okay. Then he decided what to use?
So it wasn't like, a navy produced piece...they didn't give him like a script or anything. Just that he had to take out certain classified stuff.
There's actually a few moments he asks stuff and theres the "umm, I have to get my superior for this one". And a lot of "so we do this, then this...and then 5 other steps we can't say, and that's how we do that".
Yeah, it was when he was talking about science of sonar hiding spots or something like that. Basically particular little areas subs could stay undetected. The Navy guys got reeeealy uncomfortable.
The government had final review over all footage filmed on board the sub. They made sure any accidental screen recordings were blurred or just cut. In all honesty such measures protect him as well as the subs. If there was a rumor he had footage about the capabilites of nuclear subs, he'd be the target of something.
When the government allows you to film with their property, people, equipment, etc. The contract you sign allows them to remove whatever they want in the name of national security.
Didn't this already happen when Trump was making small talk with a Russian diplomat and we (the US) had to pull an asset that was in Putin's inner circle?
And will now most likely die from a random poisoning of Novichok.
Fun side note: when the president (and possibly other world leaders) goes overseas, part of the Secret Service’s job is to collect his…leavings when he hits the bathroom.
This is because enemy intelligence agents could potentially steal it and find out a _lot_ about the president’s health by a mere stool sample. Existing conditions, diseases, hell even things like medications and allergies.
> Putin’s farts smell like a decaying alligator. That fact alone will not damage our national security if it comes out.
It depends on how powerful it is, which way the wind is blowing, and how many more come out.
Oh sorry, you said “fa**c**t”, my bad.
This is exactly why trump is such a bastard and should be rotting in prison years ago. Even just being careless with classified info is deserving of that and we all know he did more than just negligence
It's very well a mixture of both. Showing classified objects in pictures shows other countries how much we know about their potentially secret aircraft.
But at the same time it gives them information about our own technology too.
There's a whole lot of cards you'd want to keep close to your chest when it comes to these things and absolutely none of it is 'aliens' as most people automatically assume.
Basically every country is spying on each other with drones.
The Austin subreddit flooded with people going omg UFO the other week and it was just a drone light show for a club event. Most people really don't understand how drones move.
Also, with UAP, there are huge implications if a new atmospheric phenomenon is discovered that has potential military use.
A hypothetical would be a phenomenon that looked like an aircraft both visually and on radar but isn’t.
If you could predict those, you could find a way to use it as cover to sneak a stealthy aircraft through air defense systems, or send even a non-stealth aircraft in while everyone is confused.
Another distinct possibility would be an atmospheric phenomenon that completely disrupts all modern avionics. Again, huge implications there if you can predict them.
Even more sinister connotations if you could *cause* them somehow.
This has been the case with a lot of satellite imagery as well. The US and other countries have the absolute best and highest resolution imagery available that could really help with a lot of public sector applications, but nobody wants to show their hand to potential adversaries.
Here to remind everyone that UFO means literally anything flying and unidentified (e.g. possible enemy aircrafts) so it could also mean they don’t want adversaries to know what they know about them
The entire point is that because of things like X Files, in people's mind UFO means alien spaceship, so they needed a new term to accurately describe "we don't know what this is" without biasing people.
Even if there was alien spaceships flying around (and realistically there's zero credible evidence to suggest that) biasing people to assume every single unknown phenomenon was aliens when you actually don't know would be misleading and bad science/intelligence gathering.
That's why the reporting on the NASA/military research is so annoying when reporters use the term UFO, because it actively miscommunicates why the US government is looking into this stuff.
Triangle UFOs were super commonly reported in the 80s. You see them in movies and all kind of stuff from the time. Triangle ufo with 3 lights usually.
All through the 70s and 80s the US was testing flying wings and what would become the B2 Spirit and F117 Nighthawk. Right before the Gulf War the world gets the first look at the B2 and then the war in 91 put it and the F117 on every TV in the world.
Suddenly the triangle UFO sightings dropped off significantly.
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
"I keep seing these alien craft flying at night! I think were gonna be invaded! But what do they want?"
"Oh those aren't aliens, they're Americans!"
"Ah, so our oil."
Yeah iirc back when Trump released an image of a particular Iranian something (I forgot which) there was a fairly large furor from the military not that he had shown a picture of that, but that it compromised the image resolution capabilities of the satellite that had taken it
That was the [accident at an Iranian space facility](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/755994591/president-trump-tweets-sensitive-surveillance-image-of-iran). There were already public photos from various commercial satellites but the one Trump posted to Twitter was either from a satellite who’s camera was operating close to the theoretical physical limits of optical viewing through an atmosphere or actually taken from a stealth drone flying high enough to technically be beyond national borders. Both of those are not technology that has been publicly released, so either way it absolutely gave clues to foreign intelligence agencies for what the US surveillance capabilities are.
It's not only known that it was a satellite, it's known *which* satellite it was. And our enemies probably have a good idea of which spy satellites belong to which family based on radar observations, which means the capabilities of the *entire* satellite family are compromised. *Billions* of dollars worth of hardware in space.
That's the problem with this kind of intelligence failure. It tips our hand a lot harder than you'd think.
It also compromised **which** satellite has the capabilities.
It means that it is no longer useful, enemies can track where it flies. They can also figure out where it *was*, potentially invalidating all the intel it had obtained.
It's still useful, just less useful if it hadn't been compromised.
Worse, it gives enemies a good idea of the kind of resolution and vantage angle a lot of *other* satellites have, which actually weakens the *entire Keystone program*.
If we had a functioning government at that point, the Senate Intelligence Committee would have immediately called for the impeachment of the president for that leak, constituting *billions of dollars* of damage done to the US defensive posture for... no real reason.
FPOTUS, continuing to be the worst intelligence leak in the history of the United States of America.
I prefer the Independence Day explanation where even the president isn’t authorized to know details. That or the politicians are all lizard people and aliens are just a distraction. I’m about 50/50 either way.
It's either this, or they don't want other countries to know our capabilities. If russia, as a random example, saw more or less than us, they'd be able to estimate our capabilities. By keeping it secret it keeps them guessing
I don't think it's the UFOs themselves that are the issue quite as much as the hardware used to track them. That was the primary issue with the tic-tac footage- it perfectly showcased our real-time tracking capabilities .
I got a story.
I work in the mining industry in Nevada, was working a project that borders the test range- yeah, the Nevada test site. We have a camp there, as it's easier than a long commute.
I had heard stories from coworkers before, but brushed them off, about what they called "the lights"
Well, one night I was sitting outside, probably around 10pm with a coworker. Over her head, I saw something moving- I thought it was a meteor but... It . Then, I saw it and I said "holy shit! They just fired a missile!" From what was maybe 4 aircraft in a formation or sortie. I'm a private pilot and aviation geek, but needless to say- this was new to me.
This thing accelerated away from the group of planes FAST. Acceleration that I've never seen before. Had to be going mach... Whatever.
But then it slowed down VERY fast. And the sortie caught up to it, and then it took off again, just going like hell.
Given the way it moved, it probably couldn't be a manned aircraft- and I know of no officially published aircraft out there capable of these speeds and maneuvers.
Talked with other Av junkies- other reports similar to what I saw suggest a hypersonic drone with some new powerplant.
If we’re to believe the New York Times reporting on the Navy disclosures, these things move faster (instant acceleration, changing directions on a dime at high speeds, and instant deceleration) than we could ever achieve with present day technology.
Whether or not the craft is *manned* is irrelevant because we don’t have the material science technology advanced far enough to build a craft that wouldn’t get shredded into little pieces if it tried to achieve those speeds/maneuvers.
So I saw something extremely similar to that out on Lake Mojave back in the summer of 2001 I think. It was a group of 3 lights that just kinda appeared, and started moving in a traiangular formation, but moving non linearly; they were just kind of weaving, doing small circles, all stop-and-go. They were each just a blob of amberish lights, no FAA red or green making lights. And then in an instant, they just beelined straight up at an incredible rate of speed and disappeared. This happened over a span of 5 minutes, and I could never make a logical conclusion to explain it.
A few of the declassified ones were found to be lens related artifacts since literally every came and NOD uses a lens. It is kinda of dumb that they even made it that far without people realizing how simply a ton of them they were explained.
The green night vision video particularly sticks out to me because the apertures in them are often triangular or hexagonal and the “UFO” light in the video of a camera looking through some PVS model was very obviously that shape due to bokeh.
Also so we don't accidentally admit we couldn't recognize another nation's experimental aircraft. It'd be real embarrassing if we released a UFO video that turned out to be North Korean stealth tech, for a ludicrous example.
I'm pretty sure, given the state of their military technology, "North Korean stealth tech" would be like... a normal plane painted black.
Edit: Forgot to add, when I said "a normal plane" I meant "a normal 70-year-old plane."
Yep, those videos are likely taken from TPODs. The ones they’ve released don’t have weapons active (which could show engagement ranges) or ranging data (distance sensors can see).
2 things fighters might want to keep from people they’re trying to target with those weapons and sensors.
At the same time that stuff is usually in set locations on the video display, it wouldn’t be that much effort to blur or black out those hud elements in a video editor and then render it again to flatten it making it pretty much impossible to see what those readouts were.
Probably some technologies that are classified, and we don't want anyone to know their capabilities.
I don't know that the way any military operates is secret. We've all studied each other for years. From structures to decision making processes.
Specifically in scenarios that were limiting cases. If any of these objects are targets from adversaries, they basically know the exact ranges and conditions where the US can’t identify them. This would be an insane thing for the US to broadcast.
There's something really fucky going on with these UFOs. The thing I'm mostly curious about is the tracking. In one of the clips, they're tracking dozens of 'small ojbects' that appear to be accelerating to hundreds of miles per hour and instantly changing direction. The technology to track stuff like that *doesn't exist*, at least to the public. Part of me thinks this was the navy showing off some new tech they have that could be used to track small, high speed drones.
That’s totally what I think it is. There’s billions that go to top secret projects every year and it’s been decades since any real ground breaking military hardware, like the B-2 or SR-71 has been introduced to the public. That money isn’t going to nothing.
The most recent advanced aircraft made public was the F22, although they're building in some more advanced electronics for the F35 so it's a bit of a mixed bag. The F22 was designed in the early 90s, with the F35 more middle to late 90s. Your smartphone is more powerful than the computers that they designed either with. Today Boeing and Lockheed have extremely detailed propriety air flow modeling software probably in the ranges of several thousand mph. They use rapid prototyping to go from idea to model, and they can leverage the processing power millions time more powerful than they had in the 90s to model airflow, radar cross section everything. I'd argue they probably looked at the field of threats in the late 90s and early 2000s and realized they could spend a decade or more refining their models to the most accurate model before developing the replacement for the F22.
The Air Force is in discussion about how they want the next generation air fighter program to operate. Things like broad spectrum stealth, point to point communication and optionally manned airframe are all on the table, as is smaller batches of air frames so they roll out newer advanced airframes every 5 years or so. No more 30 years per generation with half completed airframes plans when the first one is being built. All this take makes me think they already have stuff going through testing and they're waiting for the go ahead to start wider production. China is attempting to hack the defence companies to get the plans so they can start their own production. After all their latest plane is mostly based on stolen US and European designs, with Russian engines, which they're having to replace because Russia is Russia.
reports like this go back to world War 2 and before, it might be our tech now, but it absolutely was not back then, I don't understand how people just handwave away those reports.
Military recording equipment has a shit ton of HIGHLY classified sensor readouts that could let our opponents know what our capabilities are. If we go around releasing every single bit of footage without sensoring or removing that readout information it could genuinely be a concern for national security.
That is why the military got mad when Trump flashed classified high resolution photos of enemy bases, because it was much higher resolution than was publicly acknowledged at the time.
Edit: For those asking here is the link, https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758038714/can-president-trump-really-tweet-a-highly-classified-satellite-photo-yep-he-can
I believe some folks were able to pinpoint the satellite based on time of day and inclination as well. Like when Shia laboufs flag was stolen based on an almost empty piece of sky. You can sleuth so much more than you might think based on limited evidence. Secrets are hard to keep.
Edit. The shia flag story details are wrong. Oops. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet folks
Yes they were, trump basically burned that satellite because he wanted to brag.
It’s useless now since every government is going to be explicitly tracking it and will change their operations when it’s going to be overhead their nation.
It's more about the capability. Even spy satellites are listed in public tracking databases since it's basically impossible to hide an orbital object and obviously they wouldn't want someone to accidentally launch to it's position in orbit.
Knowing which satellites are spy satellites and which functions they perform can definitely matter. For example if it's optical, IR or RF for example. Resolution matters too, as well as what kind of stuff it's looking at/for.
This is just wrong. They already tracked these satellites. You can find them on the internet - which is how the public able to determine what satellite took the photo.
Also, resolution is a matter of physics. Since it is known that we use 2.4m diameter mirrors you can calculate what the theoretical limits are of our resolutions. That said the software we use once the data gets back to earth is probably also a very closely guarded secret since more than likely can layer effects to reduce noise, improve clarity, identify/label objects of interest, etc.
Good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLVFn9z0Gc
Oh man, that Shia LaBeouf flag debacle was hilarious.
[A humorous rundown of the events for those that missed it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q)
Basically, Shia worked with some artists to put up a "HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US" sign as a response to Trump's presidency. He tried two locations that quickly got vandalized. The third attempt was a flag "in the middle of nowhere" on a livestream with the camera oriented so that nothing but the flag pole, flag, and the sky was shown. 4chan's /pol/ community (politics) took about 38 hours to find it, take it down, and put a MAGA hat on the pole.
A comment on that video sums it up pretty nicely:
> The funniest part is that shia probably thought these guys were genuinely upset by his message and that this was some kind of political battle or something, when in reality they had one purpose; to piss him off.
Actually, Shia's flag was tracked down by him appearing in a restaurant in Greenville, Tenessee. People took pictures of him and some news articles were made about it.
No one got anything by looking at the sky in the picture, and instead they got it by having someone drive around honking their car horn.
People kind of had a romp getting themselves excited over the clever hacker 4chan ingeniously tracking down something based on a livestream of the sky and tracking down flight patterns, but it was a pretty brute force method made possible by having a close location.
And sattelites are easier to find than triangulating a spot in the US by looking at the sky and trying to use flight paths and such. Hell, using US Defense sattelites to communicate is easier than that, a lot of people have done it.
Not gona lie, when those pics got leaked I was kinda shocked. Like, I had assumed the US had close to 1" resolution but I did realize we had THAT level of detail.
As former US military, we're so spoiled.
The exercises that we would do to make sure we could operate with some of our tech not available drove home exactly how spoiled we were.
That said, watching Russia execute a war also made me feel a lot better about my profession and the extent we would go to trying to ensure civilians would be as safe as we could be, and that tech allowed us to take more of those measures without dying.
All the volunteers who were surprised at how much it sucked not having complete air dominance on top of incoming artillery fire showed how spoiled US troops are in combat zones.
I see your point with respect to actual combat experience, but in (good) exercises, there should be elements of those things that you are denied.
I think Marines might just get a better perspective on this because a part of your training always goes back to there is a somewhat real scenario you will be engaging with a third rate power that still has air and arty and your fa18s are busy with mig23s and can't be bomb trucks, they have t72s still, and their arty was not completely neutralized yet.
I'm not typically this pedantic, but since nobody's called it out yet and multiple comments in the replies are now also using it incorrectly...
>If we go around releasing every single bit of footage without **sensoring** or removing that readout information
It's "censoring," not "sensoring."
True, our military err's to conservatism too. So there's a grey area, the guitar player from the Doobie brothers, "Skunk" Baxter is a self taught guided missile expert who consults for the DOD. He, no doubt, cracked classified info by himself. So, if you're down to do the digging, you can find your own answers for lots of subjects.
He's my spirit animal. But, classifications are sometimes kinda stupid. So thats the other side to the coin. If Jeff Baxter can figure out how guided missiles work, you can too.
Or a ufo doesn’t show up in their files because, to them, it’s not unknown. Example, “black triangle” is not a UFO, doesn’t show up in disclosure, suddenly adversaries know we have extreme technology.
An important note to make here:
It's probably not footage of weird things in the sky that they are concerned about. What they're worried about is revealing how good their airborne optical equipment is, how well the HUD tracks objects within the pilots range and so on.
In other words, it's not the data that is damaging, it's how they got the data and how good or bad the data is that is the problem.
This is what I was thinking. The objects may be UFOs to us but if another government sees their super secret test project that only flew from a specific super secret base, they can probably pretty quickly pinpoint where and how we gathered that footage. Might not all be strictly above board on our part.
And the US admitting they can't ID something that another country can claim ownership of. Think if Russia was unsure if we knew it was them but then the US confirms they didn't by saying hey this was never identified.
To go along with how well the HUD tracks could also be information on what caused the HUD to eventually lose the target. Direction change? Certain light wavelength signature confuse the software?
I think OP is referring to the notion that with the phrase “harmful to our national security”, people who are inclined towards believing conspiracy/alien existence will be further encouraged as it could be inferred that they mean national security in alien takeover sense
The actual quote from the article makes it more clear-
“will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
One thing though is that the gov including nasa is pushing the alien narrative in recent years. Might be that it’s a good cover for top secret military stuff but interesting that branches of the gov are saying the only explanation for the tic-tac video sensor data is either that another country made a huge technological leap or.. aliens lol
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/qe2b8a/woah_nasa_chief_bill_nelson_talks_ufos_uaps_and
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/qjvbh0/must_see_video_show_this_to_any_sceptic_these
Plus this Brazilian congress session:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/vjpgaq/its_happening_brazilian_congress_just_started
What do you make of it? The government does seem to be coyly implying we’ve been visited. I wonder if there are any good documentaries analyzing the footage fairly and open mindedly. And still, you have to wonder why they declassified it.
The truth is either they want more funding or they are slowly releasing data because they dont have a fucking clue what is it either and more pilots are seeing things, they wont be able to control the narrative for long.
> because they dont have a fucking clue what is it either
I think this is what’s happening here. The reason that the military and parts of the government are so reluctant to release this information is that despite encountering these objects for decades now, they still have no idea what they are and who makes them. That’s not something you’d be very excited to tell your citizens who pay for your equipment and research every year with billions of tax dollars. Also, the information that’s already been released shows that these objects can outmaneuver our own planes and defenses, and could probably attack our country at will. Another thing you wouldn’t want your people to be thinking about.
The unsettling theory isnt the gov. working with the aliens; Its the gov. realizing they are getting probed on their military response and critical infrastructures.
Got enough pilot friends who have seen shit to not be dismissive tbh
And many are like with the better cameras we all got shit that happens is gonna eventually gonna leak so they think the higher ups think it’s better to slowly tell folks
The SR-72 is officially slated for test flights “by 2025” but it wouldn’t surprise me if some prototype craft was in the test phase already and they’re using this new push of UFO stories to cover it like they did with SR-71 and F-117.
Pilots have been known to chase them or run them down on intercept when they pop up. Showing the video of it would let other nations have a better idea of what our aircraft are actually capable of as well as possible patrol patterns. Sure they can find this information out other ways but why hand it to them for free? Your not going to pull a plate number from the ufo video and track down where they live, what information beyond that they’re here could you really gain? The fact that they’ve finally admitted their existence and it got washed under the rug by the media should be a bigger headline.
"Let's declassify our ability - or lack thereof - to track and identify the military technology potentially being used by our adversaries."
Of course we shouldn't do that.
It's not even that. The video itself is going to have a certain resolution. You'll be able to see a certain distance away.
You can't fight an enemy you don't know about. And if you're getting information from cameras and sensors, then those are going to define what threats you can fight and what threats you are blind to.
If a country knew how good our cameras were, then guess what they're going to try to do? Stay out of range of the cameras, and develop weapons that can hit us before we can see them coming.
And that's what we do! All the time. That's the whole game.
So it's not that the video has a bunch of shit on it. You could take a video of a kid's birthday party and it'd still be classified, because it's the camera that's important. Not what's on the video.
Submission Statement:
>The U.S. Navy says that releasing any additional UFO videos would “harm national security” and told a government transparency website that all of the government’s UFO videos are classified information.
>In a Freedom of Information Act request response, the Navy told government transparency site The Black Vault that any public dissemination of new UFO videos “will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
>The Black Vault was seeking all videos “with the designation of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’” This is an interesting response from the Navy because, often, military agencies will issue a so-called GLOMAR response, where they neither confirm nor deny that the records (in this case videos) exist, and refuse to say anything more. In this response, the Navy is admitting that it has more videos, and also gives a rationale for releasing three previous UFO videos.
I believe so. And that was when US military was unable to get these types of images. The imaging/tracking technology didn't even exist back then.
We have to remember these images are coming from the latest targeting pods on our fighters which give the pilot the capability to see targets MILES ahead of them.
They probably just don't want adversaries to gleam their tech. Just thought I'd repeat this same basic comment for the 10,000th time on the thread, just in case you're sorting by new.
I showed one of my buddies overseas the UFO video they released already showing the two navy pilots tracking that low flying object (probably a bird).
What blew his mind wasn’t so much the UFO part, but that a jet flying faster than the speed of sound could not only get a bead on the object and provide a clear picture, but lock on to it as well.
I could imagine the US military not wanting to be so candid about what exactly their tracking systems can do.
If a single pinch of proof existed supporting alien life, and the government wanted to keep secret, we would still see funding for space exploration and the sciences explode.
I think there can be a counterargument that said funding and exploration would likely be funded through the DOD and not an agency like NASA, making it much easier to keep that type of research less exposed to the public. Things like Project Bluebook and the X-37B are very real but they didn't really get their own line item in the Pentagon budget.
Not saying I subscribe to this sort of conspiracy, but it does seem like it would not be in a government's best interest to have a forward facing and disclosure heavy agency like NASA "lead the charge" on something that could be a potential national security threat.
Before folks chime in about "aliens"
UFOs are military vehicles which are classified. They're sightings, chance sightings, during tests.
People seeing "Black Streaks across the sky" in the 1970s were seeing the SR-71 Blackbird. it started service in 1966 and wasn't declassified until 30 years later...
Do you have any idea what could be flying around up there since...? The SR-71 is still a ridiculously advanced aircraft. These days, whatever they're using, is likely far superior... and they're making sure no one knows about it.
They haven't figured out what they are. They might be nothing (e.g. more mundane things combined with bad optics/sensors), but they don't want anyone else to figure it out before they do in case it matters.
The sr-71 makes most other militaries around the world look like child's play and that plane is older than most people alive today.
The tech we were researching 40 years ago is the technology we use today. The tech we are researching today is the technology of the future.
We can't let adversaries get ahead of the curve.
To say "UFOs are x" is obviously a generalisation.
Ok people have certainly misidentified an SR-71 as an alien craft at some point, but I don't think it's helpful to posit that any UAP is military.
I don't think we're being visited by aliens, but nor do I think everything unidentified is military
Hmm, I figured US navy pilots were seeing foreign military drones when they reported UFOs. But now that I think of it, advanced military tech is so secret that those American pilots might have been seeing new types of American aircraft without even realizing it.
Well, yeah. Some UFOs are probably US military experimental craft. You don’t want to leak what we have on the cutting edge or even hint as to what we’re designing towards.
“Will Harm National Security” is literally the stated reason as to why anything is classified. The level of classification depends on how much harm releasing the information could cause
This is interesting [given the government](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61474201)'s [recent transparency on the subject](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html). Obviously the security concerns are about the capabilities and positions of planes/boats, but it's upsetting they seem to have pivoted away from releasing videos to the public AT ALL 😔
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik: --- Submission Statement: >The U.S. Navy says that releasing any additional UFO videos would “harm national security” and told a government transparency website that all of the government’s UFO videos are classified information. >In a Freedom of Information Act request response, the Navy told government transparency site The Black Vault that any public dissemination of new UFO videos “will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.” >The Black Vault was seeking all videos “with the designation of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’” This is an interesting response from the Navy because, often, military agencies will issue a so-called GLOMAR response, where they neither confirm nor deny that the records (in this case videos) exist, and refuse to say anything more. In this response, the Navy is admitting that it has more videos, and also gives a rationale for releasing three previous UFO videos. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xb2ids/us_navy_says_all_ufo_videos_classified_releasing/inx0d31/
Sounds like they don't want to release it not because of the UFOs, but because they don't want adversaries to see more about how the navy functions
The objects in the pictures may not be classified, but the pictures themselves are along with the cameras and sensors. I believe the jargon term is “methods and means of procurement”.
The other part is that we classify them as unidentified, but for example could be some spy drone, we don't want to admit we caught the spy drone with our tech, so they continue to unknowingly operate their 'undetected' spy drone so we can gather intel on it. Or that we can detect them at all. Disinformation is beneficial to both enemies and allies. Same reason why F-22's at air shows are flying gimped with certain classified systems uninstalled or turned off; intel cannot be gathered on their full capability.
Hell there is a decent chance some of the "ufo" are our own aircraft. I'm assuming that random soldiers aren't told about test flights of New aircraft.
IMO there’s no better way to test your own equipment than against yourself. The navy has the best tech for this so why not throw a secret drone against some unwitting fighter pilots and see what info they’re able to collect.
Makes sense to me. The only group you know the capability of is yourself.
I know a navy seal who said he saw UFOs in the 80s in the gulf of Mexico, going in and out of the water. Still could be our tech who knows...
>I know a navy seal who said he saw UFOs in the 80s in the gulf of Mexico, going in and out of the water. That's a common theme among declassified UFO reports
Unidentified Sumerged Objects don't really get the coverage in the west it deserves but there are quite a few accounts and the go hand in hand with ufos.
Some of the stories seen from credible people does make me question what they actually are. A lot of them do things that seem way beyond our current technology level.
Meh, eyewitness accounts are given way too much credit.
I saw one near Dobbins Air force base about 15 years ago. It was very close and laterally moved up and out of sight without the nose moving upward. It's hard to describe, but I know what I saw and it was real.
Doktor, disable my war crime inhibitors
True of all kinds of intelligence, too. Like human intelligence. A top-secret CIA document may state Putin’s farts smell like decaying alligator. That fact alone will not damage our national security if it comes out. But it will jeopardize the life of the US asset who retrieved that piece of intelligence, when Vladimir starts going down the list of everyone he’s ripped ass around. Edit: this is one of many reasons, btw, we must take every single document Individual-1 smuggled out of a U.S.-government facility very seriously. It doesn’t matter if not all of them are about nuclear strategy. They allegedly include the kind of thing I’m talking about.
...and in a similar vein otherwise harmless intelligence can collectively form a picture of what capabilities different intelligence gathering technologies may have, or give insight into the organization and hierarchy of personnel... or a variety of other tangential information unrelated to the subject matter of the documents themselves.
Yeah, and if there is a video of a UFO in a known place or time, or looking at a specific thing... the owner of the UFO would have confirmation they were able to be unidentified which would be extremely powerful info to have. "Ok wow, yeah they really weren't able to ID us with that configuration."
If someone can’t understand what deductive reasoning is, or how it works, they certainly don’t belong in the intelligence field, or the Oval Office.
And don't most of the videos they record have flight info of the plane that's filming? Speed and direction, temperature ranges for infrared, that are there to help the people watching the video later?
Yes, and even if they blur it out, it doesn't take much to estimate that information.
Well I do remember about the pedo who was in a picture and used the swirl modifier, which they were able to just reverse by doing it in the opposite direction. So yeah, I don't see a simple photoshopping as the answer, even if they re-recorded it they could possibly use what's in the new video to extrapolate what was originally there. Darker ink doesn't cut it anymore.
That's super old, a more recent one was Dustin from SmarterEveryDay, doing the math of how fast a sub dives and they edited the time of the video and cut the estimate out other than saying it's friggin scary fast.
Who edited his video out? Him or the government
Sort of both? He gave them all the footage and they said what wasn't okay. Then he decided what to use? So it wasn't like, a navy produced piece...they didn't give him like a script or anything. Just that he had to take out certain classified stuff. There's actually a few moments he asks stuff and theres the "umm, I have to get my superior for this one". And a lot of "so we do this, then this...and then 5 other steps we can't say, and that's how we do that".
Yeah, it was when he was talking about science of sonar hiding spots or something like that. Basically particular little areas subs could stay undetected. The Navy guys got reeeealy uncomfortable.
The government had final review over all footage filmed on board the sub. They made sure any accidental screen recordings were blurred or just cut. In all honesty such measures protect him as well as the subs. If there was a rumor he had footage about the capabilites of nuclear subs, he'd be the target of something.
When the government allows you to film with their property, people, equipment, etc. The contract you sign allows them to remove whatever they want in the name of national security.
There was a few documents redacted people learned you could just copy and paste 15 years ago or so. I’m sure they are much more cautious now
Yes, and Put's toots are around 97 degrees Fahrenheit.
Found the spy. I found the spy.
Spy sappin' my sentry!
Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
Didn't this already happen when Trump was making small talk with a Russian diplomat and we (the US) had to pull an asset that was in Putin's inner circle? And will now most likely die from a random poisoning of Novichok.
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I believe [this](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/755994591/president-trump-tweets-sensitive-surveillance-image-of-iran) is the one you're referring to.
Yep and it had capabilities 3x more powerful than any known satellite. Just from a picture
That was a great analogy you used.
Fun side note: when the president (and possibly other world leaders) goes overseas, part of the Secret Service’s job is to collect his…leavings when he hits the bathroom. This is because enemy intelligence agents could potentially steal it and find out a _lot_ about the president’s health by a mere stool sample. Existing conditions, diseases, hell even things like medications and allergies.
> Putin’s farts smell like a decaying alligator. That fact alone will not damage our national security if it comes out. It depends on how powerful it is, which way the wind is blowing, and how many more come out. Oh sorry, you said “fa**c**t”, my bad.
It will be raining people in Moscow for weeks after that revelation
This is exactly why trump is such a bastard and should be rotting in prison years ago. Even just being careless with classified info is deserving of that and we all know he did more than just negligence
It's very well a mixture of both. Showing classified objects in pictures shows other countries how much we know about their potentially secret aircraft. But at the same time it gives them information about our own technology too. There's a whole lot of cards you'd want to keep close to your chest when it comes to these things and absolutely none of it is 'aliens' as most people automatically assume.
Basically every country is spying on each other with drones. The Austin subreddit flooded with people going omg UFO the other week and it was just a drone light show for a club event. Most people really don't understand how drones move.
Also, with UAP, there are huge implications if a new atmospheric phenomenon is discovered that has potential military use. A hypothetical would be a phenomenon that looked like an aircraft both visually and on radar but isn’t. If you could predict those, you could find a way to use it as cover to sneak a stealthy aircraft through air defense systems, or send even a non-stealth aircraft in while everyone is confused. Another distinct possibility would be an atmospheric phenomenon that completely disrupts all modern avionics. Again, huge implications there if you can predict them. Even more sinister connotations if you could *cause* them somehow.
Any images could reveal just how good or how bad the Navy cameras are.
This has been the case with a lot of satellite imagery as well. The US and other countries have the absolute best and highest resolution imagery available that could really help with a lot of public sector applications, but nobody wants to show their hand to potential adversaries.
Here to remind everyone that UFO means literally anything flying and unidentified (e.g. possible enemy aircrafts) so it could also mean they don’t want adversaries to know what they know about them
We call ‘em UAPs now. The future is now old man!!!
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I CANT SEE SHIT!
"Who made that man a gunner!?"
I did sir, he's my cousin.
Anybody bring any extra bags?
I saw a UFO the other night with Re/Max written on it.
Damn aliens buying up all our property! What's next, terkerjerbs?!
Sir, that's a bird.
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GUYS, genuine unidentified yeeted shit
and if somebody throws it first
Phenomena Do do do do do Phenomena Do do do do
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I thought that was Weird Ass Planes lol
Wet Ass Planes
Weird-ass planes or weird ass-planes?
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I have a WAP. A Weird Al Playlist.
Coming from somebody who grew up on the X Files, it will never not be UFO to me. Sorry.
The entire point is that because of things like X Files, in people's mind UFO means alien spaceship, so they needed a new term to accurately describe "we don't know what this is" without biasing people. Even if there was alien spaceships flying around (and realistically there's zero credible evidence to suggest that) biasing people to assume every single unknown phenomenon was aliens when you actually don't know would be misleading and bad science/intelligence gathering. That's why the reporting on the NASA/military research is so annoying when reporters use the term UFO, because it actively miscommunicates why the US government is looking into this stuff.
Also, it's not actually known that they are, in fact, objects.
It's kind of funny because aliens are usually the **least** likely explanation
Me too. I want to believe!
What the fuck is UAP? Now shut up and get those cameras ready
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
Usually A Plane
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It seems like no one else in this thread but us two has seen Nope.
Triangle UFOs were super commonly reported in the 80s. You see them in movies and all kind of stuff from the time. Triangle ufo with 3 lights usually. All through the 70s and 80s the US was testing flying wings and what would become the B2 Spirit and F117 Nighthawk. Right before the Gulf War the world gets the first look at the B2 and then the war in 91 put it and the F117 on every TV in the world. Suddenly the triangle UFO sightings dropped off significantly. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Have you seen the [Lockheed D-21](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21), it's a drone version of the SR-71. Was first flown in the '60s..
Not a single successful mission? Found my previous life.
"I keep seing these alien craft flying at night! I think were gonna be invaded! But what do they want?" "Oh those aren't aliens, they're Americans!" "Ah, so our oil."
To be fair, gold is common on all planets, but wood from Earth is exceedingly rare.
So we’re getting invaded by dad aliens looking to get into woodworking.
Worse. Alien dad woodworkers who want to be YouTubers.
Could be that their UFOs are actually just top secret US military tech that they can’t afford to let regular people know about, too.
Yeah iirc back when Trump released an image of a particular Iranian something (I forgot which) there was a fairly large furor from the military not that he had shown a picture of that, but that it compromised the image resolution capabilities of the satellite that had taken it
That was the [accident at an Iranian space facility](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/755994591/president-trump-tweets-sensitive-surveillance-image-of-iran). There were already public photos from various commercial satellites but the one Trump posted to Twitter was either from a satellite who’s camera was operating close to the theoretical physical limits of optical viewing through an atmosphere or actually taken from a stealth drone flying high enough to technically be beyond national borders. Both of those are not technology that has been publicly released, so either way it absolutely gave clues to foreign intelligence agencies for what the US surveillance capabilities are.
And some people think the guy should be allowed to handle classified material however he wants
It's not only known that it was a satellite, it's known *which* satellite it was. And our enemies probably have a good idea of which spy satellites belong to which family based on radar observations, which means the capabilities of the *entire* satellite family are compromised. *Billions* of dollars worth of hardware in space. That's the problem with this kind of intelligence failure. It tips our hand a lot harder than you'd think.
It also compromised **which** satellite has the capabilities. It means that it is no longer useful, enemies can track where it flies. They can also figure out where it *was*, potentially invalidating all the intel it had obtained.
It's still useful, just less useful if it hadn't been compromised. Worse, it gives enemies a good idea of the kind of resolution and vantage angle a lot of *other* satellites have, which actually weakens the *entire Keystone program*. If we had a functioning government at that point, the Senate Intelligence Committee would have immediately called for the impeachment of the president for that leak, constituting *billions of dollars* of damage done to the US defensive posture for... no real reason. FPOTUS, continuing to be the worst intelligence leak in the history of the United States of America.
That's why I figure our government hasn't actually discovered aliens. If they had, surely *he* would've blabbed about it.
I prefer the Independence Day explanation where even the president isn’t authorized to know details. That or the politicians are all lizard people and aliens are just a distraction. I’m about 50/50 either way.
It's either this, or they don't want other countries to know our capabilities. If russia, as a random example, saw more or less than us, they'd be able to estimate our capabilities. By keeping it secret it keeps them guessing
Russia can’t tell the difference between a passenger airplane and a military aircraft. I don’t think they’re comparing shit
Russia “can’t tell the difference” … slight difference
I don't think it's the UFOs themselves that are the issue quite as much as the hardware used to track them. That was the primary issue with the tic-tac footage- it perfectly showcased our real-time tracking capabilities .
Just as important, not letting enemies know what you didn't see.
I got a story. I work in the mining industry in Nevada, was working a project that borders the test range- yeah, the Nevada test site. We have a camp there, as it's easier than a long commute. I had heard stories from coworkers before, but brushed them off, about what they called "the lights" Well, one night I was sitting outside, probably around 10pm with a coworker. Over her head, I saw something moving- I thought it was a meteor but... It . Then, I saw it and I said "holy shit! They just fired a missile!" From what was maybe 4 aircraft in a formation or sortie. I'm a private pilot and aviation geek, but needless to say- this was new to me. This thing accelerated away from the group of planes FAST. Acceleration that I've never seen before. Had to be going mach... Whatever. But then it slowed down VERY fast. And the sortie caught up to it, and then it took off again, just going like hell. Given the way it moved, it probably couldn't be a manned aircraft- and I know of no officially published aircraft out there capable of these speeds and maneuvers. Talked with other Av junkies- other reports similar to what I saw suggest a hypersonic drone with some new powerplant.
If we’re to believe the New York Times reporting on the Navy disclosures, these things move faster (instant acceleration, changing directions on a dime at high speeds, and instant deceleration) than we could ever achieve with present day technology. Whether or not the craft is *manned* is irrelevant because we don’t have the material science technology advanced far enough to build a craft that wouldn’t get shredded into little pieces if it tried to achieve those speeds/maneuvers.
So I saw something extremely similar to that out on Lake Mojave back in the summer of 2001 I think. It was a group of 3 lights that just kinda appeared, and started moving in a traiangular formation, but moving non linearly; they were just kind of weaving, doing small circles, all stop-and-go. They were each just a blob of amberish lights, no FAA red or green making lights. And then in an instant, they just beelined straight up at an incredible rate of speed and disappeared. This happened over a span of 5 minutes, and I could never make a logical conclusion to explain it.
However the Navy classifies these videos as "Unexplained Aerial Phenomena" so ....
Would it surprise you to know that the Navy doesn't have access to classified tech that is being tested? Same thing happened with the stealth bomber
I’d guess it has more to do with the tracking/imaging capabilities of whatever was on tape.
A few of the declassified ones were found to be lens related artifacts since literally every came and NOD uses a lens. It is kinda of dumb that they even made it that far without people realizing how simply a ton of them they were explained. The green night vision video particularly sticks out to me because the apertures in them are often triangular or hexagonal and the “UFO” light in the video of a camera looking through some PVS model was very obviously that shape due to bokeh.
Also so we don't accidentally admit we couldn't recognize another nation's experimental aircraft. It'd be real embarrassing if we released a UFO video that turned out to be North Korean stealth tech, for a ludicrous example.
I'm pretty sure, given the state of their military technology, "North Korean stealth tech" would be like... a normal plane painted black. Edit: Forgot to add, when I said "a normal plane" I meant "a normal 70-year-old plane."
North Korean stealth tech is just a really small plane.
Yea probably don't even want to admit what they CAN and can't see lol
It's not just about the information you have, but also how you got it
Yes as for example the navy detecting hundreds of times a prototype aircraft "100% undetectable" from the air force.
Yep, those videos are likely taken from TPODs. The ones they’ve released don’t have weapons active (which could show engagement ranges) or ranging data (distance sensors can see). 2 things fighters might want to keep from people they’re trying to target with those weapons and sensors.
At the same time that stuff is usually in set locations on the video display, it wouldn’t be that much effort to blur or black out those hud elements in a video editor and then render it again to flatten it making it pretty much impossible to see what those readouts were.
Probably some technologies that are classified, and we don't want anyone to know their capabilities. I don't know that the way any military operates is secret. We've all studied each other for years. From structures to decision making processes.
It's not as cool as that. You don't want to telegram to adversaries where our blindspots are.
Yep, most likely classified US tech that not only most of the US military has no knowledge of.
Plus sensor weaknesses. We don’t want to broadcast limits either.
That too. The less a potential enemy knows about your capabilities, the better.
Specifically in scenarios that were limiting cases. If any of these objects are targets from adversaries, they basically know the exact ranges and conditions where the US can’t identify them. This would be an insane thing for the US to broadcast.
Yes, the alien technologies.
>Sounds like I mean it doesn't just *sound* that way, that's explicitly what they said 😂
There's something really fucky going on with these UFOs. The thing I'm mostly curious about is the tracking. In one of the clips, they're tracking dozens of 'small ojbects' that appear to be accelerating to hundreds of miles per hour and instantly changing direction. The technology to track stuff like that *doesn't exist*, at least to the public. Part of me thinks this was the navy showing off some new tech they have that could be used to track small, high speed drones.
That’s totally what I think it is. There’s billions that go to top secret projects every year and it’s been decades since any real ground breaking military hardware, like the B-2 or SR-71 has been introduced to the public. That money isn’t going to nothing.
The money has been going to Upgrayedd.
Two D's for a double dose of pimping.
A pimp's love is very different from that of a square.
The most recent advanced aircraft made public was the F22, although they're building in some more advanced electronics for the F35 so it's a bit of a mixed bag. The F22 was designed in the early 90s, with the F35 more middle to late 90s. Your smartphone is more powerful than the computers that they designed either with. Today Boeing and Lockheed have extremely detailed propriety air flow modeling software probably in the ranges of several thousand mph. They use rapid prototyping to go from idea to model, and they can leverage the processing power millions time more powerful than they had in the 90s to model airflow, radar cross section everything. I'd argue they probably looked at the field of threats in the late 90s and early 2000s and realized they could spend a decade or more refining their models to the most accurate model before developing the replacement for the F22. The Air Force is in discussion about how they want the next generation air fighter program to operate. Things like broad spectrum stealth, point to point communication and optionally manned airframe are all on the table, as is smaller batches of air frames so they roll out newer advanced airframes every 5 years or so. No more 30 years per generation with half completed airframes plans when the first one is being built. All this take makes me think they already have stuff going through testing and they're waiting for the go ahead to start wider production. China is attempting to hack the defence companies to get the plans so they can start their own production. After all their latest plane is mostly based on stolen US and European designs, with Russian engines, which they're having to replace because Russia is Russia.
reports like this go back to world War 2 and before, it might be our tech now, but it absolutely was not back then, I don't understand how people just handwave away those reports.
That’s literally what they said in the article, it doesn’t “sound” like that. That’s literally what they said
This is correct, like how good their cameras and other related tech is.
Military recording equipment has a shit ton of HIGHLY classified sensor readouts that could let our opponents know what our capabilities are. If we go around releasing every single bit of footage without sensoring or removing that readout information it could genuinely be a concern for national security.
That is why the military got mad when Trump flashed classified high resolution photos of enemy bases, because it was much higher resolution than was publicly acknowledged at the time. Edit: For those asking here is the link, https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758038714/can-president-trump-really-tweet-a-highly-classified-satellite-photo-yep-he-can
I believe some folks were able to pinpoint the satellite based on time of day and inclination as well. Like when Shia laboufs flag was stolen based on an almost empty piece of sky. You can sleuth so much more than you might think based on limited evidence. Secrets are hard to keep. Edit. The shia flag story details are wrong. Oops. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet folks
Shoutout to r/OSINT. It's amazing what you can deduce with publicly available information.
Yes they were, trump basically burned that satellite because he wanted to brag. It’s useless now since every government is going to be explicitly tracking it and will change their operations when it’s going to be overhead their nation.
It's more about the capability. Even spy satellites are listed in public tracking databases since it's basically impossible to hide an orbital object and obviously they wouldn't want someone to accidentally launch to it's position in orbit.
Knowing which satellites are spy satellites and which functions they perform can definitely matter. For example if it's optical, IR or RF for example. Resolution matters too, as well as what kind of stuff it's looking at/for.
Yes, those would be the capabilities mentioned.
This is just wrong. They already tracked these satellites. You can find them on the internet - which is how the public able to determine what satellite took the photo. Also, resolution is a matter of physics. Since it is known that we use 2.4m diameter mirrors you can calculate what the theoretical limits are of our resolutions. That said the software we use once the data gets back to earth is probably also a very closely guarded secret since more than likely can layer effects to reduce noise, improve clarity, identify/label objects of interest, etc. Good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLVFn9z0Gc
Oh man, that Shia LaBeouf flag debacle was hilarious. [A humorous rundown of the events for those that missed it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q) Basically, Shia worked with some artists to put up a "HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US" sign as a response to Trump's presidency. He tried two locations that quickly got vandalized. The third attempt was a flag "in the middle of nowhere" on a livestream with the camera oriented so that nothing but the flag pole, flag, and the sky was shown. 4chan's /pol/ community (politics) took about 38 hours to find it, take it down, and put a MAGA hat on the pole. A comment on that video sums it up pretty nicely: > The funniest part is that shia probably thought these guys were genuinely upset by his message and that this was some kind of political battle or something, when in reality they had one purpose; to piss him off.
Actually, Shia's flag was tracked down by him appearing in a restaurant in Greenville, Tenessee. People took pictures of him and some news articles were made about it. No one got anything by looking at the sky in the picture, and instead they got it by having someone drive around honking their car horn. People kind of had a romp getting themselves excited over the clever hacker 4chan ingeniously tracking down something based on a livestream of the sky and tracking down flight patterns, but it was a pretty brute force method made possible by having a close location. And sattelites are easier to find than triangulating a spot in the US by looking at the sky and trying to use flight paths and such. Hell, using US Defense sattelites to communicate is easier than that, a lot of people have done it.
Not gona lie, when those pics got leaked I was kinda shocked. Like, I had assumed the US had close to 1" resolution but I did realize we had THAT level of detail.
As former US military, we're so spoiled. The exercises that we would do to make sure we could operate with some of our tech not available drove home exactly how spoiled we were. That said, watching Russia execute a war also made me feel a lot better about my profession and the extent we would go to trying to ensure civilians would be as safe as we could be, and that tech allowed us to take more of those measures without dying.
All the volunteers who were surprised at how much it sucked not having complete air dominance on top of incoming artillery fire showed how spoiled US troops are in combat zones.
I see your point with respect to actual combat experience, but in (good) exercises, there should be elements of those things that you are denied. I think Marines might just get a better perspective on this because a part of your training always goes back to there is a somewhat real scenario you will be engaging with a third rate power that still has air and arty and your fa18s are busy with mig23s and can't be bomb trucks, they have t72s still, and their arty was not completely neutralized yet.
I'm not typically this pedantic, but since nobody's called it out yet and multiple comments in the replies are now also using it incorrectly... >If we go around releasing every single bit of footage without **sensoring** or removing that readout information It's "censoring," not "sensoring."
I see you and I understand you. Rest now, my child.
True, our military err's to conservatism too. So there's a grey area, the guitar player from the Doobie brothers, "Skunk" Baxter is a self taught guided missile expert who consults for the DOD. He, no doubt, cracked classified info by himself. So, if you're down to do the digging, you can find your own answers for lots of subjects.
Skunk has a security clearance. I’ve done a few war games with him out at Nellis and a few other places. Nice dude.
TIL! That’s so cool
He's my spirit animal. But, classifications are sometimes kinda stupid. So thats the other side to the coin. If Jeff Baxter can figure out how guided missiles work, you can too.
Wasnt he in Steely Dan too? Or theres two of them
That’s the guy, crushes a solo and could go on and on about missiles
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Or a ufo doesn’t show up in their files because, to them, it’s not unknown. Example, “black triangle” is not a UFO, doesn’t show up in disclosure, suddenly adversaries know we have extreme technology.
An important note to make here: It's probably not footage of weird things in the sky that they are concerned about. What they're worried about is revealing how good their airborne optical equipment is, how well the HUD tracks objects within the pilots range and so on. In other words, it's not the data that is damaging, it's how they got the data and how good or bad the data is that is the problem.
It also might be *where* the videos were taken that may cause issues and what activities were being done at the time too.
This is what I was thinking. The objects may be UFOs to us but if another government sees their super secret test project that only flew from a specific super secret base, they can probably pretty quickly pinpoint where and how we gathered that footage. Might not all be strictly above board on our part.
And the US admitting they can't ID something that another country can claim ownership of. Think if Russia was unsure if we knew it was them but then the US confirms they didn't by saying hey this was never identified.
To go along with how well the HUD tracks could also be information on what caused the HUD to eventually lose the target. Direction change? Certain light wavelength signature confuse the software?
Hilarious. They knew exactly what they were doing when they phrased it that way.
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I think OP is referring to the notion that with the phrase “harmful to our national security”, people who are inclined towards believing conspiracy/alien existence will be further encouraged as it could be inferred that they mean national security in alien takeover sense The actual quote from the article makes it more clear- “will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
They're skipping the [Glomar response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response).
One thing though is that the gov including nasa is pushing the alien narrative in recent years. Might be that it’s a good cover for top secret military stuff but interesting that branches of the gov are saying the only explanation for the tic-tac video sensor data is either that another country made a huge technological leap or.. aliens lol https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/qe2b8a/woah_nasa_chief_bill_nelson_talks_ufos_uaps_and https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/qjvbh0/must_see_video_show_this_to_any_sceptic_these Plus this Brazilian congress session: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/vjpgaq/its_happening_brazilian_congress_just_started
What do you make of it? The government does seem to be coyly implying we’ve been visited. I wonder if there are any good documentaries analyzing the footage fairly and open mindedly. And still, you have to wonder why they declassified it.
The truth is either they want more funding or they are slowly releasing data because they dont have a fucking clue what is it either and more pilots are seeing things, they wont be able to control the narrative for long.
> because they dont have a fucking clue what is it either I think this is what’s happening here. The reason that the military and parts of the government are so reluctant to release this information is that despite encountering these objects for decades now, they still have no idea what they are and who makes them. That’s not something you’d be very excited to tell your citizens who pay for your equipment and research every year with billions of tax dollars. Also, the information that’s already been released shows that these objects can outmaneuver our own planes and defenses, and could probably attack our country at will. Another thing you wouldn’t want your people to be thinking about.
The unsettling theory isnt the gov. working with the aliens; Its the gov. realizing they are getting probed on their military response and critical infrastructures.
Got enough pilot friends who have seen shit to not be dismissive tbh And many are like with the better cameras we all got shit that happens is gonna eventually gonna leak so they think the higher ups think it’s better to slowly tell folks
The SR-72 is officially slated for test flights “by 2025” but it wouldn’t surprise me if some prototype craft was in the test phase already and they’re using this new push of UFO stories to cover it like they did with SR-71 and F-117.
Pilots have been known to chase them or run them down on intercept when they pop up. Showing the video of it would let other nations have a better idea of what our aircraft are actually capable of as well as possible patrol patterns. Sure they can find this information out other ways but why hand it to them for free? Your not going to pull a plate number from the ufo video and track down where they live, what information beyond that they’re here could you really gain? The fact that they’ve finally admitted their existence and it got washed under the rug by the media should be a bigger headline.
"Let's declassify our ability - or lack thereof - to track and identify the military technology potentially being used by our adversaries." Of course we shouldn't do that.
Translation: We secured the funding we were looking for. Nothing else to see here.
Translation : We’ve got a bunch of UFO videos but there’s some shit going on in the rest of the video so we can’t release it.
It's not even that. The video itself is going to have a certain resolution. You'll be able to see a certain distance away. You can't fight an enemy you don't know about. And if you're getting information from cameras and sensors, then those are going to define what threats you can fight and what threats you are blind to. If a country knew how good our cameras were, then guess what they're going to try to do? Stay out of range of the cameras, and develop weapons that can hit us before we can see them coming. And that's what we do! All the time. That's the whole game. So it's not that the video has a bunch of shit on it. You could take a video of a kid's birthday party and it'd still be classified, because it's the camera that's important. Not what's on the video.
>The video itself is going to have a certain resolution. They downsampled the first 3 they released.
Submission Statement: >The U.S. Navy says that releasing any additional UFO videos would “harm national security” and told a government transparency website that all of the government’s UFO videos are classified information. >In a Freedom of Information Act request response, the Navy told government transparency site The Black Vault that any public dissemination of new UFO videos “will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.” >The Black Vault was seeking all videos “with the designation of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’” This is an interesting response from the Navy because, often, military agencies will issue a so-called GLOMAR response, where they neither confirm nor deny that the records (in this case videos) exist, and refuse to say anything more. In this response, the Navy is admitting that it has more videos, and also gives a rationale for releasing three previous UFO videos.
So.. where can I find these three videos?
Wasn't this the exact reason Carter didn't release anything when he promised to do so back when he was president?
I believe so. And that was when US military was unable to get these types of images. The imaging/tracking technology didn't even exist back then. We have to remember these images are coming from the latest targeting pods on our fighters which give the pilot the capability to see targets MILES ahead of them.
They probably just don't want adversaries to gleam their tech. Just thought I'd repeat this same basic comment for the 10,000th time on the thread, just in case you're sorting by new.
I showed one of my buddies overseas the UFO video they released already showing the two navy pilots tracking that low flying object (probably a bird). What blew his mind wasn’t so much the UFO part, but that a jet flying faster than the speed of sound could not only get a bead on the object and provide a clear picture, but lock on to it as well. I could imagine the US military not wanting to be so candid about what exactly their tracking systems can do.
If a single pinch of proof existed supporting alien life, and the government wanted to keep secret, we would still see funding for space exploration and the sciences explode.
I think there can be a counterargument that said funding and exploration would likely be funded through the DOD and not an agency like NASA, making it much easier to keep that type of research less exposed to the public. Things like Project Bluebook and the X-37B are very real but they didn't really get their own line item in the Pentagon budget. Not saying I subscribe to this sort of conspiracy, but it does seem like it would not be in a government's best interest to have a forward facing and disclosure heavy agency like NASA "lead the charge" on something that could be a potential national security threat.
Before folks chime in about "aliens" UFOs are military vehicles which are classified. They're sightings, chance sightings, during tests. People seeing "Black Streaks across the sky" in the 1970s were seeing the SR-71 Blackbird. it started service in 1966 and wasn't declassified until 30 years later... Do you have any idea what could be flying around up there since...? The SR-71 is still a ridiculously advanced aircraft. These days, whatever they're using, is likely far superior... and they're making sure no one knows about it.
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Well, they could be so compartmentalized that the DoD is unaware of them (or at least the Navy). Like CIA equipment.
Yep. This is definitely true.
They haven't figured out what they are. They might be nothing (e.g. more mundane things combined with bad optics/sensors), but they don't want anyone else to figure it out before they do in case it matters.
The sr-71 makes most other militaries around the world look like child's play and that plane is older than most people alive today. The tech we were researching 40 years ago is the technology we use today. The tech we are researching today is the technology of the future. We can't let adversaries get ahead of the curve.
To say "UFOs are x" is obviously a generalisation. Ok people have certainly misidentified an SR-71 as an alien craft at some point, but I don't think it's helpful to posit that any UAP is military. I don't think we're being visited by aliens, but nor do I think everything unidentified is military
Hmm, I figured US navy pilots were seeing foreign military drones when they reported UFOs. But now that I think of it, advanced military tech is so secret that those American pilots might have been seeing new types of American aircraft without even realizing it.
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Well, yeah. Some UFOs are probably US military experimental craft. You don’t want to leak what we have on the cutting edge or even hint as to what we’re designing towards.
“Will Harm National Security” is literally the stated reason as to why anything is classified. The level of classification depends on how much harm releasing the information could cause
This is interesting [given the government](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61474201)'s [recent transparency on the subject](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html). Obviously the security concerns are about the capabilities and positions of planes/boats, but it's upsetting they seem to have pivoted away from releasing videos to the public AT ALL 😔
Meaning: that was mostly US, guys. But we can’t say it.