This is why most pilots don't talk about ufos

Originally posted by Aim64C
The artwork for those publications is often done by some civilian contract. Much like how a number of Navy instructional videos were done in cartoon format by Disney, featuring popular characters (it ended up being a huge success and reduced incidents and improved retention by a substantial margin).

What's your point ?

Each category of item to report has a realistic depiction. They didn't draw that flying saucer to be cute. The implication, and this was a military as well as civilian instruction approved up the chain of command, was that UFOs look like flying saucers aka alien spaceships, not weather balloons, swamp gas, or lenticular clouds. .

reply to post by JoeBarna


really appreciate your candor. look, can't guarantee i know for sure that you are a pilot, but as i scrolled through most of the responses, none are pilots themselves. which makes you ground zero. that is if you really are a pilot. but one would think that statistically pilots and stewardesses (not pc, i apologize) would have the greatest chance of seeing anything. wish there were more pilots who post anonymously here. especially ones that have longer start date as member here.

Its all about what we believe. If, lets say, tomorrow, we all started believing in aliens and UFO's and other dimensions and other entities, then we would all start seeing them, and before too long, they would become a regular fixture in our reality. That is why the lid is held down so tightly.

Originally posted by ofhumandescent
We were sitting around my girl friends fireplace last Christmas, drinking mulled wine and chilling out.

My girlfriend's niece is married to a UAL Pilot hub base in Chicago.

He has seen three UFO's and he says they were like nothing we or the Russians could have with our known technology at present.

the first incident, involved two UFO's together, he witnessed, they "popped" in as if from another dimension. One minute nothing, the next minute poof they just appeared. He says they were bright sphere orbs. Those were the "small ones" each about as big as a Walmart. They had to have shown upon radar.

Regarding "nothing we or the Russians could have with our known technology at present", I'm not so sure.

I don't think they can "pop in" from another dimension. But "optical stealth" and active manipulation/creation of light signatures can make very unusual things seem to happen.

Optical stealth has been a known area of development since WW2.

His copilot also saw them but said, "I like my career to much to even think about reporting this, don't think about making trouble".

Were they actually told or threatened to "not report this", or is it only self-induced fear?

Originally posted by mbkennel
Regarding "nothing we or the Russians could have with our known technology at present", I'm not so sure.

Hi Mbkenne, whatever these objects are, the reports do seem to go back a while - here are two very interesting statements describing truly bizarre flight characteristics made by senior officials in the British and Polish Air Ministries:

"Here we had a number of object seen coming in across the North Sea on coastal radar. It looked like a Russian mistake. Jet aircraft were scrambled. The objects were travelling at quite impossible speeds like 4-5000 mph and then came to an abrupt halt near to one of these stations not very high up. Jet aircraft picked them up on aircraft radar. The objects then simply made rings round them."
"Inevitably this led to the sort of enquiry which you would put in hand if you had any military responsibilities. Had something gone wrong with ground radar or with aircraft radar? We experienced pilots going out of their minds? Were people having fantasies? We *had* to investigate cases of that kind. Over the years - although there were not an enormous number of such cases - there were a sufficient number to persuade me, and a number of air staff friends with whom I had to work, that something was going on, sporadically, in British airspace which we could not explain."
"But we did not particularly want to make public statements about that. Not for something that we had no explanation."
Ralph Noyes,Senior Official with British Air Ministry - retired as Under Secretary of State in 1977





"During the 1955 Warsaw Pact exercises, a radar station in the area of Warsaw recognized two targets over the Gulf of Gdansk. The targets were moving at a speed of 2,300 km/h at an altitude of 20 thousand meters. In those days there was no aircraft with such performance. At one point it was noticed that the two objects did a 90 degrees turn, literally on the spot with no turning radius. This maneuver at such high speeds cannot be done. Most modern aircraft are unable to do so even today, and that was 50 years ago".
Colonel Grundmanem,former head of Poland's "Air Traffic, Air Force and Air Defense",

link

Cheers.

Originally posted by Schaden
So I was looking through my copy of Above Top Secret by Tim Good, in the appendix was a remarkable picture from JANAP 146 concerning MERINT reports..

So UFO isn't merely "unidentified flying object". It's a picture of what can only be described as a flying saucer ! And this one has a note that isn't in the version in Good's book, "or unidentified objects in the water".

Schaden, that's certainly an intriguing image -good find on that one.

I don't know if you've seen it but Mcrom has also posted an interesting one here regarding CIRVIS reports.

Cheers.

Originally posted by Schaden
They didn't draw that flying saucer to be cute. The implication, and this was a military as well as civilian instruction approved up the chain of command, was that UFOs look like flying saucers aka alien spaceships, not weather balloons, swamp gas, or lenticular clouds. .

Don't forget the Buck Rogers style rocket.

reply to post by SystemResistor

Being an osterich doesn't make reality any less.

In 1990 I went to a dinner party with my recently widowed mother. At dinner I asked the Cincinnati, Ohio commercial pilot if he had ever seen any UFOs. Well, He told me about twice he had seen something, and he told me what some other pilot had seen. This was 21 years ago, and I was a skeptic then so I don't remember the details. I have since then seen my own sighting while dog walking, told my neighbor who told me what she has seen near a dam, and a friend of hers saw near a bridge. If you travel alot, and are an outside person you will eventually see stuff, hint: you have to look up. Since April 2009 when I saw something weird, I have learned most sightings are in the middle of the week betwween 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. People are afraid of redicule and don't talk about things openly. You would be surprised how many of your friends and family have seen objects.

reply to post by Schaden

What's your point ?

For someone who reads between the lines as intently as you do, I'm surprised you missed it.

The point is that 'the military' is not responsible for making the clip-art it may use in its documents. The military is also not above humor and utilizing common ideas. When someone says "UFO" - one of the first things that pops into mind is the infamous "flying saucer" concept. A "UFO" is an unidentified flying object - and technically constitutes anything that lacks a positive ID.

The whole idea was to get people reporting anything they saw that was out of the ordinary. Why? It could be a Russian aircraft, ship, missile, or some other threat. You may think it's alien or behaving awkwardly - your opinion is irrelevant, only the facts about what you observed that can be compared with other reports to get a more accurate idea of what is going on.

If it was aliens - then we can't really do much about it. If it was/is the Russians, however, something can be done about that, and probably needs to.

Originally posted by karl 12
I don't know if you've seen it but Mcrom has also posted an interesting one here regarding CIRVIS reports.

I missed that thead. Excellent find by mcrom901. And that answer's someone's earlier question. That copy of Air Force Instruction 10-206 was from 2008 ! So the DOD definitely still wants military personnel to report UFO sightings, information they consider of vital importance to national security. The contradiction between what they tell the public about UFOs, and the official regulations is there in black and white.

reply to post by SuperSlovak


I can verify that from what my father told me mentioned in this thread.


www.abovetopsecret.com...

He turned to me and said "son that is a UFO" with a slight grin. At the time it did not peak my interest so much as i was more concerned with returning to my Gi Joes and Cartoons. Later i would learn he had his share of experiences in the Air Force and during WW2 even. He also worked as an Air traffic accident investigator and taught at a flight school. test pilot for the super Sabre as well so he was a very credible and logical thinking person. According to him he was told when seeing these craft during WW2 "foo fighters" to not engage them and ignore them during a time of war. When he worked at the tower unidentified craft were tracked on many occasions in the Arizona skies on Radar and performed speeds that would liquefy a man pulling such G's or G forces. They would blink in and out there one minute gone the next. He said the FAA frowned on talking about these bogies so eventually it was a common thing to just look the other way.

I can elaborate further on request , if you talk then you can expect an early retirement.

reply to post by Unknown Soldier


thanks for your response

reply to post by Schaden

I missed that thead. Excellent find by mcrom901. And that answer's someone's earlier question. That copy of Air Force Instruction 10-206 was from 2008 ! So the DOD definitely still wants military personnel to report UFO sightings, information they consider of vital importance to national security. The contradiction between what they tell the public about UFOs, and the official regulations is there in black and white.

There is no contradiction. The problem is that you have UFO=Alien / U.S. Uber-secret-project stuck in your brain. A "UFO" is an Unidentified Flying Object. The term "UFO" is an acronym (the first letter of every word in the phrase "Unidentified Flying Object" - 70+% of the words someone in the military uses in the average day is an acronym - ORM, SORM, POM, SAVI, CO, XO, NCO, OOD, JOOD, POIC, LPO, LCPO, ORMD, JSOW, JDAM, SWCC, OpFor, BluFor, DOA - and that's not even getting into agency names and other oceans of alphabet soup) - if an object is unidentified, flying, and perceived to be some kind of object - then it's a UFO.

Because that object -could- be something of interest to our military defense networks (say it's a spy plane from some other country, an experimental aircraft, or airborne monitoring equipment of some kind), it is encouraged to report stuff that is unusual. This is standard watch/sentry protocol - if the bushes rattle around and start making noises - putting it down in the logs (or reporting it to the person with the logs via radio and receiving confirmation that the message was received) that I went to investigate gives them an idea of what happened when I turn up dead. It's no different for monitoring the air than it is for the base perimeter - if it's weird or out of place, log and report it. Your job as a sentry isn't to determine what is and is not significant - only what doesn't quite seem to be normal/right, and report it.

So, to wrap it up - being encouraged to report odd things is not at all a contradictory position on behalf of the military, particularly considering UFO =/= Aliens.

Originally posted by Aim64C
There is no contradiction. The problem is that you have UFO=Alien / U.S. Uber-secret-project stuck in your brain. A "UFO" is an Unidentified Flying Object. The term "UFO" is an acronym (the first letter of every word in the phrase "Unidentified Flying Object" - 70+% of the words someone in the military uses in the average day is an acronym - ORM, SORM, POM, SAVI, CO, XO, NCO, OOD, JOOD, POIC, LPO, LCPO, ORMD, JSOW, JDAM, SWCC, OpFor, BluFor, DOA - and that's not even getting into agency names and other oceans of alphabet soup) - if an object is unidentified, flying, and perceived to be some kind of object - then it's a UFO.

I served 8 years active duty. I don't need a lecture on military acronyms. There is a contradiction. They order UFO sightings to be reported for national security purposes, and then deny UFOs have ever posed a national security threat. Let me refer you to Air Force "fact" sheet 95-03 from the NSA's website:



www.nsa.gov...

Deny ignorance.

reply to post by Schaden

I served 8 years active duty.

AT2, here, questions why you would elect to not extend your contract so close to the halfway mark. Those last ten years go by pretty quick. I'll be looking at being a Chief-Warrant by my 12-15 year mark, at the rate I'm blazing through a closed rate.

I don't need a lecture on military acronyms.

Perhaps not. But you're deficient in other critical areas related to understanding policy. Let me explain:

They order UFO sightings to be reported for national security purposes, and then deny UFOs have ever posed a national security threat. Let me refer you to Air Force "fact" sheet 95-03 from the NSA's website:

You are instructed to report any and all incidents whereby an individual attempts to gain unauthorized access to the base. After several months, a team investigates the reports and the result of all attempts to gain access. It is determined that none of the individuals attempting to access the base were a risk to security (merely curious people with no malicious intent, just thrill-seeking). However, your orders still stand that all attempts to gain unauthorized access to the base be reported.

Why?

Just because the last several months of logs do not show anything that indicates an organized effort to probe and defeat base security does not mean there will not be an attempt to do so in the future. I am not going to go over how to analyze reports to determine whether or not there is an indication that your base is being probed systematically - it's a bit unnecessary for this conversation. However - that is why you report what happens on watch. Your watch log is compiled with a hundred other watch logs and a team looks over those reports to find evidence of holes in security or ineffective procedures, indications that you are being probed by hostile forces, etc.

Project Blue Book concluded that none of the documented UFO sightings submitted to the Air Force posed a risk to National Security. We can sit here and debate whether or not aliens were the source of it, or our own top-secret projects (it is likely that some of the more outlandish explanations they use in the report were used to try and cover up things they -suspected- were top-secret projects. Compartmentalization would ensure that few people knew about some of the ongoing projects, and anything that seemed like it could have been one of our own restricted-access programs would be 'covered up' - whether it was, or not) - in the end, none of the objects depicted behavior that was worth getting excited about.

If you want to take the "alien" route - it should be fairly clear that we're at such a stark military and strategic disadvantage that it's not worth considering aliens a threat to our national security - as there's not a whole lot that can be done to address that threat. None/few of the others suggested any systematic tests of our security by Russia, who was the primary security risk at the time. The Cold War was fought mostly via spies and submarines.

Deny ignorance.

If I observe someone carrying on a highly animated conversation with someone I cannot observe to be present - I could be said to be ignorant, particularly when the person in question is addressing me; I am ignorant because I cannot see, hear, or interact with the person he/she is talking to.

Of course, it could also be that this person is fit for the loony bin.

In either case, I will still insist that person is talking to someone who isn't there, and he/she will insist there is a person there. One will always appear ignorant to the other, and the phrase "Deny Ignorance" can be thrown around by either to justify their own standpoint.

First of all read the book by Edward Ruppelt on the phenonenon, the guy who actually invented the term UFO as he didn't like the flying saucer term. He was military and also an engineer, his book was very instructive in describing the confusion, rapidly changing viewpoints and misunderstandings and secrecy that can pervade any large organisation (although at that time it seems the US was a lot more open in describing their defense operations and apparatus..plus the military was full of educated civilians who had been drafted for WWII and Korea).

Then look at this video fom the chief scientist of project blue book, a man who was there at the start of the whole UFO phenonomenon and a confirmed skeptic at the start of it, Allen J Hynek. He even went on to start his own 'UFO' organisation.

www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...

. Now you can understand the phrase 'deny ignorance'.

Originally posted by Aim64C
Those last ten years go by pretty quick.

If you're an AT2, how would you know ? I'm proud of my service, but I wanted to see my children grow up. That I was paid an hourly equivalent below the minimum wage was a contributing factor as well.


If this is your post on snopes, you have a bias. You're too comfortable sitting on the fence.

Personally - I believe there are extra terrestrial races capable of advanced space travel that would, very logically, have an interest in our own species/race and planet. But I can't prove it. I can argue in its defense - but I can't prove the existence of such a species until they either invade or drop in and make a very clear public appearance.

You acknowledge the idea intelligent aliens are out there, but you can't accept any proof they could be here, unless you see an alien for yourself. That's all too common an attitude among skeptics.

I've looked through your post history on ATS. You don't post much in the aliens+ufo forum. I think you're probably genuinely unaware how strong the evidence is suggesting aliens are here.

But some other posts of yours come across as straight up debunking.

In a thread concerning the black triangle UFOs over Belgium, you said there is nothing to indicate to you the UFO did anything that was beyond human capability, and proceeded to suggest various radar anomalies as explanations. I guess you haven't read about General Wilfred De Brouwer's investigation for the Belgium wave that conclusively ruled out such a theory.

In another thread, on the subject of aliens detecting nuclear explosions, you ruled out the possibility of a distant alien civilization knowing about them, since humans can't always detect them on this planet, and then proceeded to say at long distances, beyond a few ly, the aliens would need omnipotence to detect them, and how you doubted aliens even "a million years" ahead of us have omnipotence.

But the straw that broke the camel's back is the post where you said you don't believe there is a government cover up. You don't have to believe that. The evidence is all around, if you care to look.

So of course by your logic, the fact that official govt instructions with pictures of flying saucers, and instructions to report them under the guise of a threat to national security, must all a big misunderstanding on my part or a Disney artists having a good joke.


I don't have anything else to say other than you should dig much deeper. There are a great many things you don't realize about this phenomenon. You should speculate less, arguing from assertions, and spend more time acquainting yourself with the known facts about UFOs, and draw conclusions from that.

Deny ignorance.

Originally posted by Aim64C
Those last ten years go by pretty quick.

If you're an AT2, how would you know ? I'm proud of my service, but I wanted to see my children grow up. That I was paid an hourly equivalent below the minimum wage was a contributing factor as well.


If this is your post on snopes, you have a bias. You're too comfortable sitting on the fence.

Personally - I believe there are extra terrestrial races capable of advanced space travel that would, very logically, have an interest in our own species/race and planet. But I can't prove it. I can argue in its defense - but I can't prove the existence of such a species until they either invade or drop in and make a very clear public appearance.

You acknowledge the idea that intelligent aliens must be out there, that they would be interested in us, but you can't accept anything as proof they could be here, unless you see an alien for yourself. That's all too common an attitude among skeptics.

I've looked through your post history on ATS. You don't post much in the aliens+ufo forum. I think you're probably genuinely unaware how strong the evidence is suggesting aliens are here.

But some other posts of yours come across as straight up debunking.

In a thread concerning the black triangle UFOs over Belgium, you said there is nothing to indicate to you the UFO did anything that was beyond human capability, and proceeded to suggest various radar anomalies as explanations. I guess you haven't read about General Wilfred De Brouwer's investigation for the Belgium Govt that conclusively ruled out such a theory.

In another thread, on the subject of aliens detecting nuclear explosions, you excluded the possibility of a distant alien civilization knowing about them, since humans can't always detect them on this planet, and then proceeded to say at long distances, beyond a few ly, the aliens would need omnipotence to detect them, and how you doubted aliens even "a million years" ahead of us could have omnipotence.

But the straw that broke the camel's back is the post where you said you don't believe there is a government cover up. You don't have to believe in a cover up. The evidence is all around, if you care to look for it.

So of course by that logic, the fact that official govt instructions with pictures of flying saucers, and orders to report them under the guise of a threat to national security, must all be a big misunderstanding on my part or it's a Disney artist having a good joke.


I don't have anything else to say other than you should dig much deeper. There are a great many things you don't realize about this phenomenon. Try and speculate less, arguing from assertions, and acquaint yourself with the known facts about UFOs, and draw conclusions from that. ET is the most logical, rational explanation for many UFOs.

But keep your hopes up. I long assumed I would never see a UFO. And then one day a few months ago, in broad daylight, I did.

reply to post by Schaden


Schaden, thanks for the reply mate and you certainly make a good point about Air Force Instruction 10-206 being upated in 2008 - it seemingly contradicts the claims from the DoD's own fact-sheet and I also found it a shame that NORAD is completely exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

I don't know if you've seen this film but it's quite a good one and around the 5:12 mark it describes how the President of Ecuador took the unprecedented step of issuing authorisation through his Minister of Defense so that military pilots and personnel would be free to submit official UFO reports without fear of it ruining their careers:





Cheers.

reply to post by Schaden

If you're an AT2, how would you know ? I'm proud of my service, but I wanted to see my children grow up. That I was paid an hourly equivalent below the minimum wage was a contributing factor as well.

My specialty is knowing things. That statement will suffice for a page worth of rambling.

As for the pay - it's a give-and-take ordeal. Your effective pay, by time you figure in costs of the benefits that come with the job, is generally superior to minimum wage. You also have the advantage of consistent pay. True, you don't get paid overtime - but you don't get penalized for getting the job done so you can go home early, either. It sucks having to wonder about how bad weather (like apocalyptic snow storms in the midwest) will affect your financial outlook.

Although DFAS can sometimes get a wild hair up their rectum and decide to not pay you for a month because they thought you were being over-paid. How they mess up a pay system is beyond me.

But enough about that.

You acknowledge the idea intelligent aliens are out there, but you can't accept any proof they could be here, unless you see an alien for yourself. That's all too common an attitude among skeptics.

Tsk Tsk.

Ad Hominem.

This has little/nothing to do with the Air Force's official standpoint on UFO reports. Even if you cite the infamous Project Blue Book - the Air Force admittedly categorized something around 1% as "unidentified." However, there was no sufficient evidence to signify a threat to national security - which was the entire goal of Project Blue Book. The goal was -never- to determine whether or not ET was visiting. It was to establish whether or not there was anything to worry about from a strategic defense standpoint.

It was concluded there was none.

Since we're not part of the Borg Collective yet, or speaking Russian - I have to say the assessment is fair.

I've looked through your post history on ATS. You don't post much in the aliens+ufo forum. I think you're probably genuinely unaware how strong the evidence is suggesting aliens are here.

The Aliens+UFO forum is an absolute mess. I got tired of watching helicopters, landing aircraft, and objects only a few pixels in size and trying to have a logical discussion with people who want nothing more than to believe aliens are here and plan to either enslave us or save us from our own stupidity.

Yeah - I'm a stick in the mud.

In a thread concerning the black triangle UFOs over Belgium, you said there is nothing to indicate to you the UFO did anything that was beyond human capability, and proceeded to suggest various radar anomalies as explanations. I guess you haven't read about General Wilfred De Brouwer's investigation for the Belgium wave that conclusively ruled out such a theory.

That's outside the scope of this discussion. If you would like to continue this in a PM, or in the thread of subject, then I would be more than happy to.

Suffice it to say - I'm an Avionics Tech and an aviation fanatic. I got tired of debating too heatedly what was an was not within human capability on this forum when people suggested the plane that hit the pentagon couldn't have possibly been piloted by humans. It's quite clear that a number of people and their cited "experts" are talking out of their rectum.

In another thread, on the subject of aliens detecting nuclear explosions, you ruled out the possibility of a distant alien civilization knowing about them, since humans can't always detect them on this planet, and then proceeded to say at long distances, beyond a few ly, the aliens would need omnipotence to detect them, and how you doubted aliens even "a million years" ahead of us have omnipotence.

Even the most basic understanding of astrophysics should start to indicate why I would hold such an opinion. For the rest - a basic understanding of electronics and electronic surveillance equipment should suffice. Again - beyond the scope of this discussion - and not really on the topic.

As for the concept of a species being "omnipotent" - there's no evidence to suggest such a feat is possible. Information theory certainly makes "omnipotence" a very energy-intensive ordeal. I believe it is possible to observe events non-locally via some technological means. The energy required to do so, however, is going to increase greatly with the area being observed and the amount of data being collected. It would, thus, be a tool put to use conservatively.

But the straw that broke the camel's back is the post where you said you don't believe there is a government cover up. You don't have to believe that. The evidence is all around, if you care to look.

There's no centralized and organized cover-up. I'm sure various commands have been lead as pet-projects by various officers and politicians to look into the UFO phenomena and to recover "alien" technology, if it could be located. I'm sure that, if craft of extra-terrestrial origin have crashed in the U.S. since NORAD came online, we've likely got some boxes in warehouses containing ET debris and technology.

The problem is that such projects would have such a tight lid on them and shrouded in disinformation that only a very small handful would know much about any of the programs. A lack of centralized communication and organization would eventually stall each project. The programs would be of such restricted access that funding for them would be killed quite quickly.

It's possible the funding was merely pulled together to recover and secure the debris to later hand them off to a civilian contractor - in which case they may not be sitting in the bowels of some long-forgotten warehouse. Although this is really all conjecture.

So of course by your logic, the fact that official govt instructions with pictures of flying saucers, and instructions to report them under the guise of a threat to national security, must all a big misunderstanding on my part or a Disney artists having a good joke.

The hidden message in the Nutrition Label on my breakfast cereal told me there was nothing to worry about.

I don't have anything else to say other than you should dig much deeper. There are a great many things you don't realize about this phenomenon. You should speculate less, arguing from assertions, and spend more time acquainting yourself with the known facts about UFOs, and draw conclusions from that.

I'm quite knowledgeable on the subject. There are a number of interesting phenomena that suggest there are some intelligent entities operating some quite capable equipment in our skies. Whether that is our own restricted access programs, aliens, etc - there is certainly evidence to suggest it.

However, there's a substantial difference between evidence and verification. I'm not on the fence. I am simply well aware of what constitutes fact and what constitutes belief. I do not need to believe aliens are a fact to the point where I am finding codes for the dates of disclosure in Star Gate episodes. They've been there before, and they will be there in the future. We'll get it figured out in time.