UFO Disclosure Group Releases Newest Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet UFO Encounter Video (cnn.com) 242
alaskana98 writes: CNN and other media outlets are reporting that the "To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science" group has released the third in a series of videos purportedly showing an encounter between Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet pilots and an object moving at seemingly impossible speeds off the East Coast of the United States. The video was captured by the Raytheon: Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod and includes audio of the pilots excitedly observing this object from far above as it zooms over the ocean surface. The ATFLIR system has trouble getting a lock on the object at first but then gets a lock on it eventually demonstrating that whatever this this was it wasn't a figment of the pilots imaginations. If the video is authentic there are indeed some strange things flying in our skies. The video can be viewed here.
Obviously (Score:5, Funny)
They found Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
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Thank you for an informative link (quoted from below).
Re:Thanks for the autoplay clickbait, Miss Mash! (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody needs to shadow-ban you and all other off-topic trolls.
This is Slashdot. We started with trolls and they're part of the culture, from appy apps to cows to GNAA. You seem to be looking for Reddit.
Show me some G force god damnit! (Score:2)
It's nice to see something flying in a straight line, but I'm not going to get excited till I see something move/bank/turn at a rate that exceeds current flight technologies. THAT will be impressive.
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6/10.
The "<line noise> no carrier" or "BRB - door" is NOT optional.
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No mention of "tin foil" in your conspiracy theory ridicule.
Re: Show me some G force god damnit! (Score:5, Insightful)
The portion containing "move/bank/turn at a rate that exceeds current flight technologies" are deemed to be not-for-civilian-consumption, and have been redacted accordingly.
Remember folks; if the data is missing, it's because the conspirators hid it. And if the data directly contradicts your hypothesis, it's clearly fake data planted by the conspirators!!!1!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually this post is disinfo designed to ridicule the idea of fake conspiracies (like flat earth) being used to discredit real conspiracies (like fluoride in the water).
As usual, the fat super-nerds at the NSA are not as clever as they thin
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You haven't seen a flock of seagulls collapse into a singularity when someone throws bits of tasty food up into the air. Quite entertaining when you are high-school kids on a school trip to the coast.
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That might imply that it's a spy craft either from another country or from the USA itself. Pilots aren't privy to all of the top-secret going-ons of the government.
The one secret government coverup that actually worked (kept the secret for decades) was Project Blue Book. As the SR-71 was being invented and test-flown, there were simply going to be to many credible witnesses, to much footage like TFA. And what's the use of a spy plan the Commies already know about? So we hid the SR-71 in plain sight by treating every sighting as a UFO sighting, interviewing the witnesses about the UFO they saw, and leaking the program.
The Ruskies dismissed the inevitable leaking dat
Nothing to see (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like a weather balloon to me.
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/sarcasm I thought it was swamp gas !
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let alone how the human brain processes two dimentional retinal images into the three dimentional phenomenon known as 'perception'
yet you somehow brazenly declare: 'seeing is believing''
I Want To Believe
25kft? (Score:2)
They were flying at exactly 25k feet for the entire segment of that video?
Re:25kft? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, flying at a level altitude within relatively tight tolerances is one of the very first things they teach you when getting your pilots license.
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Re:25kft? (Score:4, Insightful)
A solid "B" on the ASQ-228 altimeter indicates the system was in barometric altitude mode (R would be RADAR altitude).. Perhaps the flashing means the area barometric pressure had not been set and as such, the altimeter is not to be referenced/frozen at the last known good altitude? Does seem odd now you have pointed that out..
Re:25kft? (Score:5, Funny)
They were flying at exactly 25k feet for the entire segment of that video?
Alien feet, not human feet.
There's an equation to convert alien feet into the size of Wales, but it's too big to fit in the margin of this page . . .
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They were flying at exactly 25k feet for the entire segment of that video?
Which means that they weren't actually concerned/interested enough in that "object" to try to intercept it, got it.
UFO (Score:5, Insightful)
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It seems to me you're trying to have it both ways here. If it's merely dust, or an insect, or some other other mundane occurrence fooling the pilots' sensor, then it would be the sort of thing that happens somewhat regularly, that the pilots would be used to dealing with. Given their excitement, this event is clearly not usual from the pilots' perspective, (who presumably know their equipment well, given they use it every day)
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Wait, so you're saying that because something happens, it must be common? And if it isn't common, it must not be a known thing?
Wouldn't it make more sense that if it a mundane sensor occurrence, then it is uncommon or rare, because the pilots are exited by it?
Notice how far off of logical your answer is? You have evidence that it is uncommon or rare, and you take that to mean that if it was the most likely explanation, it would have to be common instead. Because the pilots have more experience with common r
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>Wait, so you're saying that because something happens, it must be common? And if it isn't common, it must not be a known thing?
I don't think I said anything along those lines.
>Notice how far off of logical your answer is? You have evidence that it is uncommon or rare, and you take that to mean that if it was the most likely explanation, it >would have to be common instead. Because the pilots have more experience with common readings. There is no reason to think that at all.
It certainly *could* be
Re:UFO (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're discounting the experience of fighter pilots. They have hundreds (some thousands) of hours of flight time and a lot of experience not to mention a lot of classroom education devoted to understanding aviation platforms they will encounter and the complexities and contradictions involved in tracking other flying objects (many of which may not be manned, like missiles). They're literally world-class experts at in-flight interception of flying objects.
If these guys are surprised and mystified by something they encounter in flight, I'm willing to accept it's a pretty unusual anomaly. It doesn't mean little green men, but the other extreme implies they're inexperienced or naive, which is even less likely.
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I think you're discounting the experience of fighter pilots.
What is the experience of these particular fighter pilots? Have we asked any other fighter pilots with more experience what it could be? It honestly didn't even seem to be going that fast to me, just that it was close to the water. It was also flying in a very straight line. It could be a cruise missile test, who knows?
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My sense is that flying an F/A-18 SuperHornet off an aircraft carrier crosses a threshold of experience that makes their expertise sufficient. The existence of other fighter pilots with more experience doesn't disqualify these specific pilots' experience or expertise.
It could be a cruise missile test, who knows?
I suspect that these pilots have either the instruction, instrumentation, experience or ground controller feedback to know that it's not a conventional cruise missile. Neither you nor I have any experience with this in-flight imagery platform
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he existence of other fighter pilots with more experience doesn't disqualify these specific pilots' experience or expertise.
I'm not trying to disqualify anyones opinion, I'm just pointing out the huge continuum between "first flight off a carrier" and someone flying for 20 years. It's entirely possible they just haven't seem something like this before.
Neither you nor I have any experience with this in-flight imagery platform besides a handful of YouTube videos to even remotely analyze the movement of this object or its possible genesis. This whole video boils down to the pilots' reactions as experienced military aviators in combination with the imagery platform's video.
I've got less than that, I have no idea. I agree unless this was something they just weren't aware of, something secretive being tested. Being a military aviator doesn't mean you've seen everything, or even most things. Shit, even someone REALLY experienced might not have seen
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I'm just pointing out the huge continuum between "first flight off a carrier" and someone flying for 20 years.
They don't let just anyone take off and land $70 million dollar fighter planes from a ship at sea. These guys have years of instruction and hundreds of hours of flight training before they ever set foot on an aircraft carrier.
So even a "green" pilot is neither inexperienced or uneducated, but I highly doubt the military would have allowed a newly minted carrier pilot be involved in intercepting these things. The odds are extremely in favor of these pilots being very experienced Naval aviators.
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but the other extreme implies they're inexperienced or naive, which is even less likely. :)
Come on
They are americans, what do you expect?
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As can be learned from Winston Churchill quotes, it doesn't really matter if we might be experienced and wise, we still tried all the other answers out for size before settling on what we knew was Right.
There is absolutely no way to judge from the actions of American military personnel if they are inexperienced, naive, have a clever plan, or are just plain nuts. This is actually by design. It is explained somewhat in the movie The Lost Battalion [wikipedia.org].
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I heavily discount all words that all people say. Especially words that describe the person's experience. In cases such as this where I have video, I usually end up thinking they were clueless about what they saw, but made up an explanation anyways!
I do not care if they're purported to be "experts." But in this case, they're not experts in sensor design at all, they're just experienced in a field of endeavor that causes them to sit in from the sensor readouts for long periods of time.
I'd expect them to be f
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If you are talking about an uncommon or rare explanation than it is hardly the most likely... it is unlikely, to the point of being rare. Determining that a blimp is more likely than Aliens is mostly just bias.
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Uh, you know, it all depends on if you've already narrowed it down or not.
Like, at first you don't think of any good explanation at all, so everything seems unlikely, both common reasons and uncommon reasons.
If you then have a bunch of circumstantial evidence that points at uncommon reasons, (for example, in the past lots of things of this nature have turned out to be insects stuck inside an oil lense in the sensor, or something like that) then that uncommon reason to have a problem is the most likely that
Re: UFO (Score:2)
Wait, so you're saying that because something happens, it must be common?
Apparently there's just no discussing this without the brilliant autistic nerds working themselves into a frenzy... "It simple can't be...!" What none of us realize is that when we get frustrated and/or upset (and this subject is particularly frustrating to those who only tend to use their left hemisphere, and upsetting to those who derive comfort from their firm, inflexible view of "reality"), it greatly reduces our ability to think clearly, hence comments such as the one above...
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Just because you're bigoted against people with disabilities doesn't make you smawt or knowy or whatever, man.
It also obviously doesn't even imply you can read, since you didn't comprehend any of the points I made. I can tell because you said a bunch of weird stuff about "can't be" blah blah, and I wasn't using absolutes at all. In fact the points I did make were highly critical of that sort of attitude.
It shouldn't really be any surprise, as soon as you use language of bigotry it is obvious you're an idiot
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Being mundane does not mean it is common.
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I see UFOs all the time, usually they turn out to be insects. Sometimes birds.
Personally, I'm not even convinced they saw an object other than their sensor readout screens. And if an object was involved, it might only be "flying" in the sense that it is inside a sensor and the sensor is flying.
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> Pentagon official who said "UFOs existence is proven beyond a reasonable doubt."
Here is the quote:
Source:
http://www.newsweek.com/ufo-ex... [newsweek.com]
And? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why has /. stooped to the level of publishing UFO conspiracy bullshit? I call it bullshit because it lacks any substance of real information. "The video is of something... but we don't know what exactly but it's definitely a thing!" Great... when you find out what it is then you will have a story. Until then you should stfu.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know what the letters UFO stand for, right?
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The organization releasing the details clearly believes UFOs are aliens. They also apparently believe in telepathy [tothestarsacademy.com], and a bunch of other wacky sci-fi bullshit.
UFOs in common parlance means little green aliens from Pluto. Don't be pedantic.
Not all that fast (Score:5, Interesting)
If you follow the video from 1:35 to 1:55, the range displayed on the screen drops from 4.4 nautical miles to 3.4.
That's 0.1 mile per second or 185 m/s. The speed of the F18 itself and the shifting angle makes calculating the speed of the UFO more difficult, but it looks looks like the object is approaching the plane rather than flying away. So part of the 185 m/s are from the F18's own speed. As a rough guess, the thing was doing perhaps Mach 0.5. There are a lot of man-made objects that can do that. A drone maybe?
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Yes. A Gulf Steam IV or V. Also many other private craft. Looks like a drug run to me flying fast and low to avoid radar and no lights to avoid detection. Still left an IR signature though. I totally agree with the speed calculations. More hype than substance about something that can be easily explained. Wish I had points.
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Claim: UFO was making impossible maneuvers!
Evidence: UFO appears to be flying in a straight line
Claim: UFO was moving at an impossible speed
Evidence: UFO was traveling at about Mach 0.5
Claim: UFO was at an impossible altitude
Evidence: UFO was flying low, possibly to avoid civilian radar.
Claim: UFO disappeared from RADAR suddenly
Evidence: UFO f
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Sadly you are correct. It's almost impossible to have any kind of discussion with these people about how they are viewing it incorrectly. They know somebody that's a friend of a friend and they said it so it must be right. Happens all to often.
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Yes, and then the video ends for no apparent reason, with the mysterious object still locked.
Most probable explanation: ET caused a malfunction of some kind in the recording gear.
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1 (nautical) mile / 20 seconds = 0.05 miles/ second = 180mph (about 90 m/s), about Mach 0.23 at sea level.
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That's 360 kts!
Parallax movement for stationary object (Score:5, Informative)
The motion of the water is upwards/right. If they were filming with a constant pan/tilt the water would appear moving down/left given their heading.
Now, they locked the camera tracking at the object (at somewhere between 0 and 25k ft) and that would make the water appear to move upwards/right even if the object wasn't moving at all, due to the parallax effect. This is similar to how a street light appears to move relative to the background (when you look at it, i.e. track it), while the background and the light in fact are stationary, you're just changing perspective when you drive along the road.
So, it is entirely possible to get this effect with a very slow moving, or even stationary, object due to the parallax. The "apparent fast linear motion" is also consistent with the fast linear motion of the aircraft.
It could be a drone, a bird, or even a bag floating in the air. To tell otherwise, one would need more information, primarily the of the FoV of the camera.
impossible conclusions from the evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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The video doesn't seem to provide evidence of "impossible speed", without knowing the distance to the object the angle of the camera plus the movement of the jet could mean this is anything from impossible speed to a slow moving object that the camera is making appear fast.
The speed we've seen mentioned here is mach .5 or mach .6, which has not been refuted, so the "impossible speed" hype of the summary (and headlines elsewhere) seems to be some over-excited and misleading BS, as expected.
The thing that worries me (Score:2)
If there is an alien civilisation that has arrrived here recently creating all these weird booms that would mean all of those in control or our government wouldn't be the supreme power on our planet and who will comfort us from scary things?
Worst of all they would have to answer to a more technologically advanced race for being assholes and fucking up the planet we live on. I don't think anyone wants that so even if it is true we should just make up as many reasons as we can so we don't have to answer for
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it's pretty obvious if we did have an alien visitor who would be the supreme power. There won't be any comforting provided; they'll be shitting their pants like the rest of us.
Aliens coming here would see just how peaceful we are and say "Hey, let's go visit the highly evolved primates on #0422, they are so welcoming!" but since there is no such things as Aliens with technology millions or billions of years ahead of us and it's not possible that they've always been here, this discussion is just a theory.
Uh, let's try and not assume why an alien species might be visiting us. Chances are when WE finally have to leave our planet, it will be because we fucked it up beyond repair. Those visiting us might have suffered from the same damn fate.
Obviously for the steak - WHAT DO YOU THINK CATTLE MUTILATIONS ARE! and why would *we* leave. Anything that happens now is a problem for future generations, so we will be ok, I'
Looks like a sea-skimming missile (Score:2)
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China, Russia, private sector or the UK is not sharing again.
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The Russians are just testing the new hypersonic Kinzhal missile. It can go up to Mach 10, who knows how much it is still at sea level.
This thing was moving far SLOWER than any missile I'm aware of. That means it must be aliens.
Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely agree 100%.
It's a UFO. It's apparently flying (but that's not proven). It's apparently an object (but that's got a given either). And we don't know what it is.
And?
To be honest, it fits all the classic hallmarks of "UFO as aliens" sightings, from the scale, to the speed, to being just a blob. I'm really disappointed that people are still doing this stuff in 2018...
But I'm much more disappointed that Slashdot sees fit to make an article of it.
Re:Sigh. (Score:4, Funny)
O, I don't agree. /. posting this, imo.
I didn't read the article (nothing new there).
I didn't watch the video.
What I did, was read the comments. The comments alone makes it worth
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That's no moon (Score:2)
Let's go to the film... (Score:2)
"Here's the official, stolen, government training film of the secret plan to deal with an alien uprising."
(Martial music swells in the background)
(NCO-In-Charge Commentator): "Classified ultra-secret! Air Force generals only! Ten-hut! At ease mens, take your seat!"
(The General): "This is General Curtis Goatheart. If you are viewing this film, then we are under extraterrestrial attack. Beware- your brain may no longer be the boss! If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are probably hallucinating
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+1 FT
Wow! (Score:2)
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Yep, pretty much. These videos come accompanied by a wall of hype about showing amazing things. But nothing amazing appears in the video. Same as the last one. It is always an object locked dead center in the camera, showing no sign of "maneuvering" and with the apparent motion quite possibly entirely due to parallax and the aircraft itself.
And this stuff is being pushed by a guy who is making money from this hype. This is a commercial venture, converting gullibility into cold hard cash legally. He is using
Starting to think this is an advertisement (Score:2)
Anyone know whether Raytheon's AN/ASQ-228 is available for export?
HUD/targeting/tracking system artifact (Score:2)
2 Year old repost (Score:2)
Looked like a drone to me... (Score:2)
Not at all UFO in behavior IMHO.
In fact, my first thought was either a drone, or the testing of a new "ground effect" torpedo, which glides just above the surface of the water allowing it to travel significantly faster than a traditional torpedo, while simultaneously be very difficult to target and take out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why we don't have these already I will never know. Sure, they won't be as effective in 30ft swells. But still would be a great tool to have available.
Induction (Score:3)
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Or just a bug.
I mean, seriously, the computer flipped a bit. This is evidence that the computer flipped a bit.
It tells nothing about if an object was even detected.
Sensors are useful when they're reporting information in their expected and well-calibrated regions. Odd-looking data does not imply an important observation, though it is certainly possible. Odd-looking sensor results imply a sensor problem.
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Theoretically, which particular bit might you flip on a computer to produce a fast-moving trackable object in a video stream and have the targeting system lock onto it?
Re: I want to believe, but (Score:2)
All it shows is a video of the targeting system locking on an object that is surprisingly unperturbed by the atmosphere. It doesn't vary in distance, apparent size, doesn't shake or anything that would be considered normal when picking up an object, only slowly rotating as if it were locked in a fluid either right inside or outside the sensor itself.
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Before the targeting system locks onto the object we can see the same object flying across the screen multiple times as the camera attempts to track it. The behavior is otherwise normal for tracking an object at long distance. Those cameras don't shake like a dude with a camcorder.
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My assumption would be for the camera to pick up atmospheric disturbances especially of hot objects at distance and the object would thus be dimming and brightening or appear to be shaking, even if the camera was somehow perfectly able to keep track of an object.
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Were the pilots on drugs and hallucinating as usual then?
You joke, but altitude hypoxia can result in disorientation, hallucination and mental impairment. At 20,000 ft, your blood is only capable of carrying 2/3 the oxygen it can transport at sea level. Trying to breathe air at 35,000 ft can result in as little as 15 seconds of useful consciousness. Part of your cockpit scan when flying with a pressure demand flow system is a visual check of the flow meter (which works like the little windows at gas stations that confirm the fuel is running) and the oxygen PSI ga
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Whichever bit stores your conclusion about "is the tracking system locked on?"
What a silly question. You clearly don't understand what a "bit" is on a computer, or how it is used, or what flipping one means.
There was a single correct interpretation, and it was also the most obvious one.
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Nonsense. There is no one bit for being locked on to a phenomena visible on a video feed. It didn't lock on to nothing.
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You know you don't understand the basics of programming when you say that stuff.
Yes, there is a single bit that stores the boolean value about if the current state is "locked" or "not locked."
It didn't lock on to nothing.
Yeah, says who, Harry Potter? It locked onto something, and that something might very well have been nothing! Do you comprehend any of your own words? Waving your hands doesn't cause you to have knowledge of why the target lock indicator was or wasn't on you nincompoop.
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You know you don't understand the basics of programming when you say that stuff.
Funny, I'm beginning to think the same thing about you, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not reading my posts carefully.
Yes, there is a single bit that stores the boolean value about if the current state is "locked" or "not locked."
Sure, quite likely there is. But like I said, there is no one bit for "lock onto this visible phenomena in the infrared video feed in particular."
Yeah, says who, Harry Potter? It locked onto something, and that something might very well have been nothing! Do you comprehend any of your own words? Waving your hands doesn't cause you to have knowledge of why the target lock indicator was or wasn't on you nincompoop.
It takes some seriously magical thinking to think that the visible thing that the system locked onto was also some kind of glitch that matches perfectly with the targeting system glitch. If you understand anything
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Really? A bug at 25k feet going mach .6. Because for that sensor to pick up a bug like that it would have had to have been flying with the jet and been maybe a couple feet from the sensor. Not quite even remotely pissible in this realm of realuty. It picked up something moving fast 1000s of feet below it.
Wait, mach .6 is a "seemingly impossible" speed? Since when? Even if this is supposed to say mach 6, we've seen things that fly that fast, like various rockets and experimental scram jets.
Re: Flying high? (Score:2)
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When a couple of F-16 pilots dropped a bomb on allies in Afghanistan, part of their defence was that they were high on speed (as ordered), so possibly not that far off.
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I've been around military personnel who thought they were alone. When they aren't in a Life Or Death situation they can be immensely childish. I'm not saying for a moment that there aren't some very smart and respectable people working for every nation's military, but on average the culture is deliberately dumb and it's not where the best and brightest tend to go.
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So you're saying if they sounded like stoned jocks playing a videogame, it would somehow be impossible to notice, because Freedom Fries? Did I get your complaint right?
Re: The lock on means a solid object (Score:3, Insightful)
But I clearly can tell from the difficult time at first the pilot had at first locking on that the object was moving fast and did not have any wings.
I clearly can tell that you pulled that conclusion out of your ass.
Re: The lock on means a solid object (Score:5, Funny)
"...I am trained in gorilla warfare "
Mano a mano?
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Mono a mono
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Jocko homo.
Re: The lock on means a solid object (Score:2)
I see the Counterstrike crowd has migrated to Slashdot.
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Why is the US taxpayer funding a war against gorillas?
For the Gorilla Channel.
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wtf is this doing here?
This is where we discuss unidentified anonymous cowards.
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Obama did it.
It was clever the way he misdirected his enemies ire; for instance those FEMA concentration camps. He had you all up in arms (pun not intended) about how he was going to banish his foes to the camps. Of course, nothing came of it. That never was the plan.
The actual plan is in its final fruition. Those staging camps are now manned by his minions: the drones are being deployed (and of course are being called UFOs, a useful deception); they have tricked MSM into being the mouthpiece for their prop