First US Navy Pilot To Publicly Report UAPs Says 'Congress Must Reveal the Truth To the American People' (thehill.com) 192
Ryan Graves, former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot who was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, says more data is needed about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). "We should encourage pilots and other witnesses to come forward and keep the pressure on Congress to prioritize UAP as a matter of national security," writes Graves in an opinion piece for The Hill. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from his report: As a former U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot who witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) on a regular basis, let me be clear. The U.S. government, former presidents, members of Congress of both political parties and directors of national intelligence are trying to tell the American public the same uncomfortable truth I shared: Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don't know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) last week published its second ever report on UAP activity. While the unclassified version is brief, its findings are sobering. Over the past year, the government has collected hundreds of new reports of enigmatic objects from military pilots and sensor systems that cannot be identified and "represent a hazard to flight safety." The report also preserves last year's review of the 26-year reporting period that some UAP may represent advanced technology, noting "unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities."
Mysteriously, no UAP reports have been confirmed to be foreign so far. However, just this past week, a Chinese surveillance balloon shut down air traffic across the United States. How are we supposed to make sense of hundreds of reports of UAP that violate restricted airspace uncontested and interfere with both civilian and military pilots? Here is the hard truth. We don't know. UAP are a national security problem, and we urgently need more data.
Why don't we have more data? Stigma. I know the fear of stigma is a major problem because I was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, and it was not easy. There has been little support or incentive for aircrew to speak publicly on this topic. There was no upside to reporting hard-to-explain sightings within the chain of command, let alone doing so publicly. For pilots to feel comfortable, it will require a culture shift inside organizations and in society at large. I have seen for myself on radar and talked with the pilots who have experienced near misses with mysterious objects off the Eastern Seaboard that have triggered unsafe evasive actions and mandatory safety reports. There were 50 or 60 people who flew with me in 2014-2015 and could tell you they saw UAP every day. Yet only one other pilot has confirmed this publicly. I spoke out publicly in 2019, at great risk personally and professionally, because nothing was being done. The ODNI report itself notes that concentrated efforts to reduce stigma have been a major reason for the increase in reports this year. To get the data and analyze it scientifically, we must uproot the lingering cultural stigma of tin foil hats and "UFOs" from the 1950s that stops pilots from reporting the phenomena and scientists from studying it. Last September, the U.S. Navy said that all of the government's UFO videos are classified information and releasing any additional UFO videos would "harm national security."
Mysteriously, no UAP reports have been confirmed to be foreign so far. However, just this past week, a Chinese surveillance balloon shut down air traffic across the United States. How are we supposed to make sense of hundreds of reports of UAP that violate restricted airspace uncontested and interfere with both civilian and military pilots? Here is the hard truth. We don't know. UAP are a national security problem, and we urgently need more data.
Why don't we have more data? Stigma. I know the fear of stigma is a major problem because I was the first active-duty fighter pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP, and it was not easy. There has been little support or incentive for aircrew to speak publicly on this topic. There was no upside to reporting hard-to-explain sightings within the chain of command, let alone doing so publicly. For pilots to feel comfortable, it will require a culture shift inside organizations and in society at large. I have seen for myself on radar and talked with the pilots who have experienced near misses with mysterious objects off the Eastern Seaboard that have triggered unsafe evasive actions and mandatory safety reports. There were 50 or 60 people who flew with me in 2014-2015 and could tell you they saw UAP every day. Yet only one other pilot has confirmed this publicly. I spoke out publicly in 2019, at great risk personally and professionally, because nothing was being done. The ODNI report itself notes that concentrated efforts to reduce stigma have been a major reason for the increase in reports this year. To get the data and analyze it scientifically, we must uproot the lingering cultural stigma of tin foil hats and "UFOs" from the 1950s that stops pilots from reporting the phenomena and scientists from studying it. Last September, the U.S. Navy said that all of the government's UFO videos are classified information and releasing any additional UFO videos would "harm national security."
Move Along (Score:2)
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If they are aliens, Congress is unlikely to know any more than anyone else.
If they are Chinese balloons, Congress has no reason to cover them up and plenty of reason to publicize them.
If they are secret U.S. government projects, they are secret for a reason. Disclosing them would be criminal and stupid.
Re: Move Along (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are secret government projects that are being regularly detected but everyone is afraid to speak of for looking crazy, maybe the government should know they're being detected?
This doesn't mean that the military should declassify them, but they should probably make it less stigmatizing to report them for people that detect them. And also maybe try to make them less dangerous to our pilots?
I have no opinion on what they are, I just think that a culture of not reporting them within the military at the very least leaves the potential for next gen too secret project to have un known flaws.
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If they are secret government projects that are being regularly detected but everyone is afraid to speak of for looking crazy, maybe the government should know they're being detected?
The military aircraft is almost certainly well aware of how detectable their aircraft are. They don't need anonymous tipsters for this.
Re: Move Along (Score:2)
Re:Move Along (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not discount a fourth possibility -- that they are optical illusions of some kind, that people are mistaking for physical objects. That would explain both their physics-defying observed behaviour and the complete lack of any evidence outside of sightings.
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This is among the most likely of explanations.
Re:Move Along (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but optical illusions don't have radar signatures. Which some of the more recent reports have gone to great lengths to collect. Right alongside optical feeds across several spectrums (typically visible & UV & IR). So yea, I'm with you on the sense that many reports are obvious garbage, but we're getting some that are really difficult to discredit so easily. I think we need to encourage open disclosure, especially within commercial aviation and military, as those observers have the most useful diagnostic platforms available to capture on-demand data. Until then, we're just channeling Fox Mulder saying he wants to believe.
Re:Move Along (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been living in comfort for so long that they don't actually realize how much of a unreliable shitshow the real world is. There are layers upon layers of hardware and software in our daily electronics that smooth out glitches.
People have to stop treating measurement devices of any sort as impartial and completely objective. Equipment is just as subjective as anything else.
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You should cure your depression by killing yourself.
Re:Move Along (Score:4, Interesting)
Until then, we're just channeling Fox Mulder saying he wants to believe.
This is the biggest thing.
They are exactly what they are called: Unidentified. To the random unwashed masses they mean little green men, alien invasion, SciFi shows and similar.
What could they be? Anything imaginable. What are they today? Unidentified.
Many get identified as sensor illusions, some as reflections. Some have been identified years later as eventually-declassified research. Some could be a case of We know those folks up in ${research_aviation_lab} were doing something like that, but we won't talk about it. But who knows, they could be time travelers, interstellar visitors out for a joyride, or maybe swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
It is rarely a matter of trying to discredit, although that's certainly something useful in identifying most of them. For the ones that truly remain unidentified, all the publicly released conclusions are similar: benign, or at least, they've never been documented as hostile yet.
"Smart" helmets, AR-like (Score:3)
Sure, but optical illusions don't have radar signatures.
With "smart" helmets , operating in an AR-fashion, integrating sensor data with displayed graphics (ie F-35 letting pilot see through the plane), we may very well let bogus radar data have some sort of visual representation.
I think we need to encourage open disclosure, especially within commercial aviation and military, as those observers have the most useful diagnostic platforms available to capture on-demand data.
We will always have the chain of command issue. Some sighting may very well be undisclosed R&D aircraft (perhaps unmanned so more violent maneuvers are allowed). It would be proper to tell the pilot not to not speak of it to anyone (military or government or civilian) without authori
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Sure, but optical illusions don't have radar signatures. Which some of the more recent reports have gone to great lengths to collect. Right alongside optical feeds across several spectrums (typically visible & UV & IR).
And yet, to date, there still isn't a clear photo of anything at all. Lots and lots of IR images showing big blobs of heat though.
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"optical illusions", seen from various different angels by airplane, on radar of those airplanes, on radar of special radar aircrafts - aka Hawk Eyes - on radar on the carrier those planes launched from, on radar of AEGIS cruisers protecting that carrier?
Seriously?
" and the complete lack of any evidence outside of sightings."
Tell us more about that "lack of evidence". Never heard about a lack of evidence when we are flooded in evidence - just can not make any sense of it.
Re:Move Along (Score:5, Insightful)
Most likely, none of the above. Navy pilots are not necessarily more reliable than others when it comes to "unidentified" objects. It's like when Stanford Research Institute tested Uri Geller but did not conclude correctly that he was using common magic tricks - the mind can trick itself, fool itself, justify its own mistaken perceptions, and so forth.
A big mistake many make, and it happens in courtrooms too, is to believe their own eyes. A second big mistake is to trust their own memory. Memory is highly fluid and is in no way reliable over time, and sometimes not even in the short term of a few minutes. For example, some will never see the guy in the gorilla suit. Another example, someone will swear their wedding photograph was altered because it's not how they remembered it. The human mind is very faulty in a lot of these ways, because it didn't evolve to be a scientific instrument of precise data collection.
These are all a likely mix of all of the above - some things are secret projects of our own, some are secret projects of adversaries, some things are illusions, some are natural phenomena, some things are hoaxes, etc. But NONE of these answers will satisfy the "I'm not saying it's aliens, but..." people.
Re:Move Along (Score:5, Interesting)
Memory like computer vision description of scene (Score:2)
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If despite claims of "great risk personally and professionally" it's actually someones meal ticket, perhaps a bit of skepticism is in order https://www.uncertainvector.co... [uncertainvector.com]
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> If they are aliens, Congress is unlikely to know any
> more than anyone else.
More to the point, if aliens have the technology to cross the 100+ light years to get here (It's been just shy of 100 years years since we started doing radio astronomy. So if they were closer, we'd already be watching their television.), and to get here while somehow also hiding the massive amount of waste heat that any interstellar drive would spew at us while they decelerated into our solar system...
Explained (Score:5, Interesting)
Parts of the US military conduct wargames on other parts of the US military to judge our capabilities and readiness. Some of parts don't know what's happening and document the unusual encounters, and the truth isn't revealed due to interdepartmental secrecy and no reason to tell them.
2nd Explanation (Score:2)
You are a foreign government and you want to test the US's air defense radars, which is incredibly useful information. You drive out a was upstream from an air base or radar line, inflate an oddly shaped helium Mylar balloon with a known, but unusual radar pattern. Then you send it up and listen to air traffic on a $90 radio. At some point in time the government is going to send a plane up to see what the heck is up there. With some basic math you can figure out where the balloon was in relation to the rada
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The other thing to note is improvements in technology never actual result in better pictures and clearer evidence, just more and more garbage that entices us with the hope that a slightly better resolution might show us a miracle. That is because these are just artifacts of the technology creating distortions at and beyond their practical limits, sometimes distortions of real physical objects but that is a minor detail. As you point out, some of this wargaming is intentionally riding near the limits of th
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https://www.axios.com/2023/02/... [axios.com]
Sure they're about the furthest thing from a super-technology that can zip back and forth at mach 10 or whatever you hear about UFO's.
Still it surprises me the previous ones were not detected. It's not a great look for us.
Kent Brockman sums it up perfectly (Score:3)
The truth is out there... (Score:2)
They don't need to tell us. We can infer that a "UAP" video which is clearly a tracking lock onto a sea bird from 8-10 miles away is a not-so-subtle warning against those who might otherwise initiate hostilities against us. Just turn off the TV and think. If a balloon at an altitude where it can easily be taken down by just about any interceptor isn't taken down until after it crosses the continental US, it's because we wanted it to see something.
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If a balloon at an altitude where it can easily be taken down by just about any interceptor isn't taken down until after it crosses the continental US, it's because we wanted it to see something.
Something that this balloon could see that a satellite couldn't?
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Depends on the radiation you want to "see". The atmosphere is surprisingly opaque at certain wavelenghts.
Re:The truth is out there... (Score:4, Interesting)
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If it's something a spy satellite can't see but a balloon that high can .... then it can be seen from a commercial airliner like the ones China's commercial airlines fly over the USA every day ...
commercial pilots (Score:2)
Why these military reports and not so many commercial reports? Pretty sure there are a lot more commercial flights, odds and all.
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Why these military reports and not so many commercial reports? Pretty sure there are a lot more commercial flights, odds and all.
Altitude, probably. Also, the aliens are interested in our military installations and operations, where the airlines are not usually flying.
Re:commercial pilots (Score:4, Interesting)
Commercial pilots rarely fly near military testing facilities...
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I was good friends with a retired 747 pilot (he passed away recently) and I asked him about this. He said that he saw them regularly and his colleagues did as well. There reason they don't talk about it is they would lose their job and career overnight.
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Commercial pilots are more familiar with how airliners flying in the distance look.
classified transcript (Score:4, Funny)
I can see it now.
Whatever this is,it's big.
Two cylindrical projections on top, one below.
Purpose--undetermined.
Her hair was too... red (Score:5, Interesting)
These reports don't prove anything, but they have probative value. The truth is out there, don't mutilate it.
Anyway, it was Venus.
No other object as been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus.
Even the former leader of your United States of America, James Earl Carter Jr., thought he saw a UFO once... But it's been proven he only saw the planet Venus.
Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus.
Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception.
Yet you somehow brazenly declare seeing is believing?
Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder, and I wouldn't flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you saw anything last night other than the planet Venus, because if you do, you're a dead man.
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I see a bunch of UFOs sometimes when I drive home in the dark. It's lights reflecting off of the otherwise nearly invisible power lines for the light rail, and those lights zip back and forth as the car headlights move past. They really do look a little creepy at times; starting as a bright star among the rest, but then darting around.
Seeing is believing - I believe I saw something. But I'm not dumb enough to declare it an alien craft or super secret government project.
Here's a weird one, a couple weeks g
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"No other object as been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus."
Jupiter
Even if UFO's are aliens (Score:5, Insightful)
...the noise from the nutcases and partisans will swamp any serious study.
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...the noise from the nutcases and partisans will swamp any serious study.
Isn't that true about anything, now? Not just UFOs.
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Only Covid, climate change, gas stoves, evolution, science, math, logic, pizza...
Pics or it didnâ(TM)t happen. (Score:2)
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Well that's the whole point.
The discussion is about unidentified objects. If the pictures were clear and detailed then it would be much easier to identify the objects in question, therefore they would no longer be unidentified would they.
You can find many clear and detailed photos of aircraft, birds, balloons and optical illusions online, that's what the vast majority of these unidentified pictures are going to be.
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The point the OP is (at least if I get him right) trying to make is that we have high quality cameras, each and every single one of us, yet all we get of these "UFOs" is grainy, smudged, blurry pictures.
Wouldn't you think that someone taking a picture of the scientific discovery of the millennium would take care to take a GOOD one? And take as many as the damn phone can hold, because it's not like you can go back and take another batch in case they turn out bad?
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My daughter saw Nessie on the underwater radar thing they have in the tour boats. I know the unbelievers will say it's just a reflection of a stepped bit of rock at the bottom of the loch, but when you're 7, it's definitely Nessie ;-)
If it's any consolation, I took a picture of the screen using my 12 megapixel camera phone. The screen was probably VGA though.
Pls wake me up when the little green men land (Score:2)
I've been waiting for more than 40 years for a decent sighting. Somehow the lens technology has not progressed and it's still all fuzzy pics and electronic anomalies.
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Ever wondered why aliens always contact people with belt buckles larger than their heads who reek of moonshine even through the TV? They always land somewhere in backwater hicksville instead of, say, at halftime during the Superbowl at the site of the Superbowl.
Imagine flying for billions of miles and then crashing in the middle of nowhere. They seem to be really awesome at interstellar navigating but just can't handle atmospheric flight, it seems.
This has all been settled by Randall Munroe (Score:5, Informative)
You can't handle the truth (Score:2)
America has lost its shit over far less. There's zero point in debating this publicly. At least until people get the "5G bill gates wuflu clotshot" out of their system.
As a collective we're way to dumb to discuss things like this and we break down discussing things far simpler.
Let's ponder this for a moment (Score:2)
There are sightings of unusual flying objects over military bases and training facilities. Flying "oddly" and not showing up on radar. Doing strange maneuvers and flying fast.
What part thereof makes you think "aliens" and not "experimental military aircraft" instead?
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Long story short, we're about to get our butts kicked.
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Long story short, doesn't matter.
When wondering whether you should worry or even care about something, there is one thing you should always ponder first: Can I influence it? If the answer here is no, you can as well ignore it.
If a civilization that mastered interstellar travel wants to eliminate the human species, they will. There isn't anything you can do about it. Interstellar travel is approximately 2 centuries out for us, barring any sudden breakthroughs. Ponder what warfare looked like 2 centuries ago
UFO sightings are an Anglo-American phenomenon. (Score:2)
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And what is "the truth"? (Score:2)
Pilots see weird shit, don't know what it is and record it in their logs. In many cases this isn't going to be reported because it happens in the context of a military flight or is otherwise exempt from freedom of information rules. Lack of disclosure doesn't mean it's space aliens.
Hint (Score:2)
It's drones. Lots of different kinds of drones.
One of three (Score:2)
1 : Misidentified - it's something normal that they mis-identified as being a lot further away and so can do crazy manoeuvres, or lot nearer - (Venus)
2 : Radar anomaly - these are far more frequent - especially near to the ground than people think
3 : Experimental aircraft - which is often why the military blanket won't talk about them - so you can't identify which are which
I told you all... (Score:2)
It's the aliens! :P
In other news, people saw flying bananas... and they looked rape. Imagine how much banana strong drink you could make with a giant banana?!
Alien probably, but not a security risk. (Score:3)
We've observed these things for years. So far we've seen them:
1) Dart away suddenly.
2) Fly in groups (i.e. flock).
3) Hang around metal and maybe radiation sources.
What they haven't done is try and communicate with us or act in any way that might be described as unequivocally "intelligent."
For my money, these things may be alien (and possibly ubiquitous throughout the galaxy) but I don't see any evidence that they're any smarter than the average guppy.
Honestly, if it was up to me, I'd bring one down with an EM pulse gun, cut it open and see what made it tick.
Re:Alien probably, but not a security risk. (Score:4, Funny)
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Perhaps. I'm betting that one would drop and the rest would run away. Think guppies, or songbirds.
"It was just a weather balloon." -- China (Score:2)
What's up with UAPs??? (Score:2)
When and why did UFOs become "UAP"s? I seem to have missed the memo on that one. Did somebody decide that UFO is somehow now a politically incorrect "micro-aggression" against Vulcan and Klingon ships?
Re:TRUMP: Now more than ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
So just double down on dismantling America and every ideal we have been striving for then?
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You mean the guy who couldn't be bothered to read a TWO PAGE intelligence report?
Re:TRUMP: Now more than ever. (Score:5, Funny)
Why read it when he can just take it home?
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He was waiting for the movie to come out.
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The world agrees.
Seriously, four more years and the US should be neutered pretty effectively.
Re:TRUMP: Now more than ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
The world agrees.
Seriously, four more years and the US should be neutered pretty effectively.
You are an example of an interesting phenomenon: people who can't grasp the scale of a certain (could be anything but in this case it's geopolicial power) and assume that any value higher the surprisingly low value they can imagine is itself only slightly greater.
In this case you seem think that the US is perhaps slightly more powerful than China (I'm guessing here) and that therefore any reduction in US power will mean that it is less powerful than China.
In fact, the US is probably ten times more powerful than China for any serious military or economic issue. It would take a truely massive reduction in US power to "neuter" it. That's not going to happen in four years or probably even forty.
Re:TRUMP: Now more than ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even necessary that the US becomes weaker than anyone else. The US can still be a powerful nation, that's not even remotely the problem. The US can very effectively stand in its own way, without any prodding or aid from abroad.
While it's completely irrelevant for the average Joe whether this or that party is currently distributing the pork between its cronies, it's very important for the parties and their cronies. All the while, Joe decides which politicians gets to split up the pork. Now, Joe won't get any of it, but that's also not the point, he's the one who gets to say who is getting fed. It's in a strange way like living in a gang neighborhood and getting to decide if the blue or the red gangsters get to fleece, rape and pillage you. Sure, to you it doesn't matter whether you suck this or that dick, but to the wielder of that dick, it sure does matter. And they want you to suck their dick, not the other one.
The thing now is that you'll suck that dick that tells you the most that you're a good bitch instead of slapping you while giving head. OK, some like that better, but let's not overstretch that analogy. The point is that both parties have to pretend to cater to their voters, so they can't just do whatever they please, they have to pet their bitches head so they keep sucking.
And that alone ensures that the US doesn't even need an outside foe to be effectively neutered. All it needs is enough of a controversial figurehead on the throne to keep itself busy with itself, bickering and struggling and keeping yelling at each other. Kept busy. Kinda like two bullies fighting each other so they don't notice that the geeks steal their lunches.
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While it's completely irrelevant for the average Joe whether this or that party is currently distributing the pork between its cronies, it's very important for the parties and their cronies. All the while, Joe decides which politicians gets to split up the pork. Now, Joe won't get any of it
As the president is called Joe this took me a couple of readings to parse correctly. Also why this Slashdot obsession with sucking things?
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Right, the figurehead was named Joe lately. Sorry, I don't keep track of unimportant trivialities.
DO NOT FEED TROLLS!!! (Score:2)
This is a classical example of a post that should have been ignored.
Re:TRUMP: Now more than ever. (Score:5, Funny)
The best thing about Trump is that he is living proof that anyone can become president. So if your kids seem to have no actual skills, tell them to not give up hope because politics may be in their future.
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The best thing about Trump is that he is living proof that anyone can become president.
"Anyone" would imply the position is attainable by folks of limited means, and until proven otherwise, by the female members of our species.
If anything, Trump becoming president just served as reinforcing the fact that unless you have significant wealth, influence, name recognition, and a penis, you probably don't have a shot at residing at the White House. Those are the only qualifications which truly matter.
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tl;dr: The presidential election is a popularity dick-waving contest.
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What do you have against women's handbags in the military. What are you trying to say ?
I'm willing to bet there's a lot less reticule in the armed forces than you might think.
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What do you have against women's handbags in the military. What are you trying to say ?
The extraterrestrials wear Prada.
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The audio of a US Navy team leader on a carrier going on about a swarm of drones, and a US representative talking about them having physics defying capabilities is pretty embarrassing when some YouTuber thinks to line them up against a star chart.
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Don't forget the UK (or at least don't confuse it for an eastern US state). That's where the crop circle hoaxes started and there are still plenty of people there who think they're from extraterrestrials. Also some of the most famous early UFO "sightings" came from the United Kingdom. It's likely that America inherited much of it's goofiness from that country.
Re:Ever notice it is just the US dealing with UFOs (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, I was sent by ATC to investigate a UFO once while doing some night flying training in the UK.
I'd been watching lights dancing across the cloudbase somewhere over the town, thought, "hey, that's unusual," and left it at that. I was far too busy learning to land in the dark. But an old lady called the police to report a UFO, the police called ATC, and - because the fire crew went on a break and I was the only student that night qualified to be solo without them - ATC called me.
Turned out it was a new night club opening downtown, and they'd brought in some searchlights. The air was so clear that night that I could see clear across the country, so there was no visible beam from these things. And from the ground over the next couple of nights, I could see that they were programmed to form circular patterns on the cloudbase that, if you wanted badly enough to believe, could have looked like a flying saucer hiding in the cloud. But still, I got sent on a UFO hunt.
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There was a nightclub in Guildford,, Surrey that had these for several months after opening (must be back in the mid/late 90s, I guess) - a sort of widening and narrowing spinning array of 5-6 beams. They were *bright*. The story goes that Heathrow complained and they had to turn them off - they must have cost a fortune to buy and to run, but the owner was something of a showman, so wanted to advertise his club as many ways as he could.
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Some "jocks" are smarter than average (Score:2)
Pilots aren't special! Many are as stupid as the general population...or possibly worse. Including FIGHTER pilots! (Fighter JOCKS)
Fighter "jocks" have passed college algebra with at least a grade of "C", and received a 4-year degree in something. Not spectacular but probably above average.
Being highly trained on a specific task ...
Like recognizing aircraft with only a glimpse, estimating its speed and course? Seems pretty on target with reporting UFOs.
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I've seen US college graduates. I wouldn't say that requires above average qualifications.
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I've seen US college graduates. I wouldn't say that requires above average qualifications.
You might need to review what "average" is.
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Holders of an associate degree are approximately 50%, so yes, average.
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Well, there's now plenty of video of fighter jocks getting excited about seeing something that is verifiably not doing anything unusual. Said jocks said later that it was "defying the laws of physics."
It's not proof they didn't know at the time it was a bird, balloon or airliner, but it does indicate either that or they're unreliable witnesses after the fact.
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Re: How do you explain...? (Score:2)