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Are UAPs Going To Become the Team B of the 21st Century?

Published on 35 Comments on Are UAPs Going To Become the Team B of the 21st Century?

Today the Pentagon released its long-awaited report on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Click here if you feel like reading it—it's only four pages long. Basically, the report says that nobody has any idea what's going on, which is honest but not especially satisfying. It also doesn't really leave any scope for comment from the hot take industry.

However, I will comment on this, from the Washington Post's reporting:

“I was first briefed on these unidentified aerial phenomena nearly three years ago,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Since then, the frequency of these incidents only appears to be increasing. The United States must be able to understand and mitigate threats to our pilots, whether they’re from drones or weather balloons or adversary intelligence capabilities.”

....Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the ranking member of the intelligence committee, said...“This report is an important first step in cataloging these incidents, but it is just a first step. The Defense Department and Intelligence Community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern.”

The report says that UAPs could be a national security problem if they "represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary." But come on. I know it's fashionable to trash talk US intelligence these days, but it's not that incompetent. A lot of the stuff that gets reported by pilots would require technology light years ahead of our own on a whole bunch of different levels (stealth, propulsion, avionics, etc.). Hell, some of it would probably require anti-gravity. Human technology is by far the least likely explanation for any of it.

This poses a question. Do Warner and Rubio really believe what they're saying? Or is this going to become the latest Team B nonsense designed to justify ever higher defense spending? I'm just asking questions here.

35 thoughts on “Are UAPs Going To Become the Team B of the 21st Century?”

    2. aram

      I found this article convincing. The response to your (Kevin's) concern is that the UFOs are not really accelerating super quickly but it just looks that way because they're interfering with the radar.

      1. AZCatsFan

        This kind of stuff is already in inventory for the US military. Look of a weapon called MALD. Search on you tube for MALD HARM JSOW for a simulation video of its capabilities years ago, and this is unclassified. Who knows what was possible then let alone now in the classified space

  2. HokieAnnie

    Senator Mark Warner is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Perhaps he is being circumspect because he cannot say what he really knows about the topic. There could be a far more sophisticated "We don't know but here's what we suspect is going on" answer that is classified.

  3. ey81

    I wish people, including Kevin, would stop misusing the term "light years." Light years measure distance. He means "millennia."

    (And please don't do any clever relativistic stuff about the interchangeability of space and time; that doesn't justify the use of "light years" to mean long periods of time and you know it.)

    1. ProgressOne

      Technically right but see Webster's definition #2 below.

      1. a unit of length in astronomy equal to the distance that light travels in one year in a vacuum

      2: an extremely large measure of comparison (as of distance, time, or quality)

      They give three examples:
      - seems like light-years ago
      - has light-years more talent
      - two minutes and yet light-years away from the crowded village

    2. Special Newb

      The time it would take to travel a light year is a massive unit of time you pedant. That's why it's used that way

  4. ProgressOne

    I doubt it will cost that much to continue to gather data and do some things that might result in better data. Somebody qualified and with the resources needs to be studying this. The military seems to be best suited since they have lots of planes and lots of sensors.

    My main question is whether these are even objects made of matter. Learning that alone would be a breakthrough. If we simply knew they were real, physical objects - that changes everything. By the process of elimination, alien crafts becomes the most plausible explanation.

    1. Justin

      It’s also a great justification for an increase in someone’s budget. Money makes the universe go ‘round.

  6. George Salt

    This account makes sense to me: this is some form of electronic warfare:

    “This takes me back to circa the 1960s when the CIA designed and was building the Mach 3 A-12 Blackbird to replace the U-2,” says Barnes. At the time, the CIA was gravely concerned that the Soviet Union’s new P-14 “Tall King" radar system would be able to detect the A-12 flying over their airspace. To combat these concerns, the CIA launched an audacious program to develop technology that could electronically generate and interject false targets into the Soviet radars, to trick them “seeing” and tracking non-existent “ghost aircraft.” The project’s codename was PALLADIUM. "

    ... "Poteat was, however, able to offer some little-known details about PALLADIUM that potentially hold significance to recent UFO reports. “To determine Russia's ability to detect small targets, we used submarine-launched balloon-based metallic spheres,” said Poteat. “The idea was for the early warning radar to track our electronic aircraft. Then for our submarine to surface and release the calibrated spheres up and into the path of the oncoming false aircraft.”

    "Though descriptions of “balloon-based metallic spheres” sound somewhat similar to eyewitness accounts of UFOs, Poteat explained that the different size spheres were used to detect Russia’s radar cross-section detection capabilities and not to try and fool the Soviet Union into thinking they were seeing a flying saucer. "

    "Area 51 Veteran And CIA Electronic Warfare Pioneer Weigh In On Navy UFO Encounters"
    https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31151/area-51-veteran-and-cia-electronic-warfare-pioneer-weigh-in-on-navy-ufo-encounters

    Then again, if China or Russia has this kind of capability, why would they so brazenly flaunt it? This is the sort of capability you'd want to keep under wraps.

  9. pjcamp1905

    From what I can gather, this ultimately derives from an attempt to keep a few senatorial nuts, notably Harry Reid and Ted Cruz, happy.

    Harry Reid really needs to be ashamed of himself.

  10. golack

    Dust on the sensor or bug on the camera lens.
    Probably not laser pointers.

    Where are Scully and Mulder when you need them?

  11. skeptonomist

    Some of the phenomena (not "objects") may be explained but some won't be and there will always be more sighting. This will go on forever. There is really no way to "research" these phenomena no matter how much is spent. What can you do with tiny, fuzzy objects at the limit of resolution of the apparatus? If there really were objects they would show up in some reproducible way. Where are the images which are big enough to show the space aliens or Russians looking out the windows? Objects that big are explained.

  14. NealB

    Not seeing any interest in UAPs here in Milwaukee. We're not flat enough to see out and not hilly enough to look very far up, so they're probably just not catching our eyes.

  15. Citizen99

    Let us whip out Occam's Razor.
    1. It's EXTRATERRESTRIALS! A brief look at the state of knowledge about the probability of this: planets that can support life for the billions of years necessary to develop intelligent life appear to be extremely rare in our galaxy. The only one we've found that has even a snowball's chance is 1200 light years away.
    2. It's CHINA/RUSSIA! The 'maneuvers' that these objects seem to be executing would require such immense breakthroughs in physics that it's inconceivable that it could be concealed from the interconnected, very leaky world we now live in.
    3. Some Navy pilots just don't know have the technical background to know how certain IR camera glitches can show things that look a lot more mysterious than they really are.
    I know it's the most boring explanation, but I vote for #3.

  16. cld

    Let's remember a lot of these things were seen visually as well as with instruments, some of them were seen only with instruments and some were seen visually but did not appear on instruments.

    So, I'm voting for it's a drone program testing itself out against real world targets.

  17. theAlteEisbear

    The idea that this represents some advanced human technology given that the sophistication of these aerial objects re maneuvering and speed existed as they do today 80 years ago.

  18. Loxley

    'The Defense Department and Intelligence Community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern'

    This phenomena has been going on for generations- how many military assets have we lost? How many institutions destroyed (not by the GOP, by UAP)? How many Americans lost (we lose tends of thousands annually to other causes, mostly right-wing policies).

    So, how exactly could anybody but pulp sci-fi author consider these a threat??

  19. firefa11

    Well, I agree that human action is pretty much the least credible explanation

    But, US intelligence actually IS that incompetent, and has been for a long, long time

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