Interesting story. As someone who is interested in this, uh, subject, it is astonishing the number of "Air Ship" sightings that were reported in the latter quarter of the 1800's. Sightings on the ground and in the sky of Air Ships that moved very fast, even vertically and against the wind and had powerful search lights that turned night into day so to speak.
Anyway, there is much written about this with some great research done by John Keel.
There are an awful lot of UFO/UAP sightings by the Navy in the last two decades. And they largely ignore them. There's a consistently-reported "sphere-inlayed transparent/translucent stationary airborn cube" aircraft that the Navy gets hundreds of reports for by its pilots. And the number has been growing year-over-year.
Only a few have been seen with the human eye. The majority are seen via instruments. They know they're the same type of aircraft because their flight styles (or rather, the lack thereof) are identical to the ones seen in person.
They were largely undetected until the Navy rolled out some more advanced sensors/instruments relatively recently, and now they see "flocks" of them flying in formation, or sometimes individuals stationary and unaffected by wind patterns.
Is it aliens? Birds? Foreign drones? Experimental drones from higher echelons of our own government? Nobody knows. That's why it's actually interesting. Because even the Navy can't say it has an answer. But almost nobody seems to be interested in finding out, for some reason, despite them routinely flying in our restricted airspace without permission.
Tyler Rogaway wrote about the possibility that these "cube inside a sphere" floating objects are actually a specific kind of radar reflector. There are patent drawings in the article that are worth more than 1000 words. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-th...
ETA: the balloons are designed to reflect radar beams from surface ships/submarines that make them appear to be performing all sorts of incredible maneuvers on radar, which is pretty much exactly what you describe here.
Fascinating article (especially the anecdote from the Cuban missile crisis), though it's worth noting that they state these objects don't explain the tic-tac video.
These reflectors and a projection technology similar to this [] could be used in tandem. Testing it on service members is logical and has of precedent. The potential of realistic holographic projection over long distance is terrifying though. The navy’s change of course on the reporting of sightings could be due to poor reporting from their members. American adversaries, or even the ultra rich could also be behind these projects. Criminal organizations have more dirty money than they can spend, why not fund research when labs at sea can be easily paid for with dirty money in the right jurisdictions?
Maybe it's all a prank/hoax perpetrated by pilots and tolerated by Navy command, who perhaps see some value in muddying the waters about what's real or isn't real, sowing doubt about the technology America might have, confuse America's rivals.
I've noticed that the people who think the alleged Navy sightings are genuine seem to generally believe that Navy pilots are beyond reproach, all work no play, never perpetrate hoaxes, never misread their instruments, never get deceived by their own senses, etc etc. From listening to them, you'd get the impression that the testimony of Navy pilots is the firmest sort of scientific evidence.
Well I've met a small number of Naval aviators, and I can tell you that although they were professionals, they were also human. Punking the public for shits and giggles is a real possibility with them.
I've known my small share of military aviators back in the day and these are some pretty serious folks. I cannot imagine them now or then perpetuating a sustained hoax such as the possibility you are suggesting. I just don't see that happening FWIW.
Absolutely possible. I'm not discounting that either. I just want a decently-funded investigation and explanation for all of it. Just to know for sure. The "gimbal" craft's recording is still unexplained, for example, and from what it appears, it defies our understanding of physics.
Ultimately, it remains an unidentified flying object, but between West’s conclusion and a physics defying anomaly, I’d lean squarely towards the former.
Mick West's analysis is very convincing. I don't think any of the publicly released videos show anything exotic. It's possible the pilots were deceived, perhaps through wishful thinking. Or the pilots understand the videos are mundane but guessed that laypeople might mistake the videos for something exotic and decided to have some fun.
Bennewitz detailed his assertions to the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, who regarded him as a deluded paranoid. UFOlogist William Moore claims that he tried to push Bennewitz, who had been in a mental health facility on three occasions after suffering severe delusional paranoia, into a mental breakdown by feeding him false information about aliens.[1] In 1988, his family checked him into a psychiatric facility.[3] Former special agent for the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations Richard Doty claimed that in the 1980s he was tasked with hoaxing documents and feeding false information to UFO researchers, including Bennewitz.[4] Richard Doty is featured in the 2013 documentary "Mirage Men", a film alleging "how the U.S. government created a myth that took over the world. UFOs, and weapons of mass deception."[5]
> That's why it's actually interesting.
No, what grabbed you attention is that their is some governmental authority behind this. If that wasn't the case, your comment reading as someone whose interest in UFO emerged from the Navy stories, you wouldn't bat an eyelid.
Sounds more like the new set of instruments has a similar artifacting pattern. It would be like saying "Until we got modern multi-lens cameras, we did not realize there are multiple suns, but they are invisible unless you use our new sensitive equipment. These suns move rapidly around the field as you move the camera and provide light but no heat" about lens flares.
Interestingly enough the Navy has a patent to make UFOs that look real on radar and other sensors. [1] This seems like a good explanation as to why the Navy disproportionately has these sightings.
It is possible the people who have made statements don't know about this technology or didn't know it was being used. It would also explain why the higher ups don't seem to really care to find answers.
> But almost nobody seems to be interested in finding out, for some reason, despite them routinely flying in our restricted airspace without permission.
Congress seems very interested in finding out. There is legislation in both the 2022 and 2023 Nation Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) that mandates government investigation of UAP. An unclassified report was supposed to be delivered to Congress last October but for unknown reasons it has been delayed.
Radar. And I didn't mean to say that the instruments can detect the translucence. I meant that the ones that were seen in person were translucent, and have similar behaviour on radar to the ones that were seen in person, thus it can be assumed that they are likely the same class of objects.
Another interesting detail that I forgot to point out: the one that was recorded by a Navy fighter's FLIR (public record, you can find it easily) had virtually no heat coming off of it, while simultaneously being unaffected by the wind and gravity. Which is reason enough for raising eyebrows on its own. Again, I'm not immediately jumping to aliens or anything. I just want it explained adequately, because it seems to defy current capabilities.
do the navies / air forces etc. of other nations also report events like these? how about USAF? Non-military observers, weather airplanes, etc? I always hear it's "US Navy" but it would seem odd aliens have a predilection for popping in front of only one very specific military organization on the planet.
Skeptoid did an article on this story. It appeared with a bunch of other stories in that newspaper that were pretty clearly jokes.
>In one, an "aerial monster" landed in a field, piloted by men from New York. In another, the crew consisted of lost Jews from the ten tribes of Israel who told a judge they'd come from the North Pole.
There are/were actually a lot of UFO “landing pads” around Texas. There was one in my hometown that was gossiped about often. Pretty wacky forgotten history:
Or it could have been insulting. What if the alien wasn't a christian and the poor thing is now doomed in whatever purgatory its religion dooms it to until it gets the proper rites performed? Such a small minded assumption to be made that a foreigner would practice the same rites as the locals.
I can appreciate that "you do what you know" aspect, so can also see it as respectful too. However, I'm not the one that matters in these cases as I'm not a deity at the head of a religion. Some of these deities get really upset when you don't follow their teachings. Even if you've never heard of them so how could you know. Some deities tell their followers to slaughter all living humans so they can have their land. Some say to kill the non-believers. Some say to do specific things with their remains otherwise damnation for thee.
Let's just say, I would not like to be the one making that decision for fear of sending someone down an eternal path that they might not have expected
It's actually the perfect cover: the last place anyone would expect you to hide an alien is directly under a sign that says "alien here." Ingenious of them to pull it off and play up this "tourist attraction" angle.
That's my impression too. If anyone legitimately believed alien remains (or parts of an alien spacecraft) was six feet under that rock, the government would've gotten it either by not caring what people in the area thought about it, or literally tunneling under the earth and taking it covertly.
> If anyone legitimately believed alien remains (or parts of an alien spacecraft) was six feet under that rock
It is quite possible that nobody really buys into it.
Or - another theory - the powers that be who would have to authorize it understand that their tourist trap angle is over if it is just a normal dead body. Therefore, it's not worth the risk to discover the truth.
The US government does not care if it has podunk authorization to exhume a body, nor does it care if it's a good tourist trap. Bear in mind the study of alien technology presumably results in complete military and technological superiority on this planet.
Either there never was an alien body there, or the US government has already taken it. There is definitely not alien remains under that rock right now.
Yeah I was gonna say, this story sounded familiar. Props to Brian Dunning on this one for apparently being one of the few to actually look at the context of the publishing of this story. It appeared with a bunch of other stories in that newspaper that were pretty clearly jokes.
>In one, an "aerial monster" landed in a field, piloted by men from New York. In another, the crew consisted of lost Jews from the ten tribes of Israel who told a judge they'd come from the North Pole.
> Aurora, Wise Co., Tex., April 17.–(To The News.)–About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing through the country.
> It was traveling due north, and much nearer the earth than ever before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed direct- ly over the public square, and when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden.
> The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one on board, and while his remains are badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.
> Mr. T. J. Weems, the United States signal service officer at this place and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars.
> Papers found on his person–evidently the record of his travels–are written in some unknown hieroglyphics, and can not be deciphered.
> The ship was too badly wrecked to form any conclusion as to lis construction or motive power. It was built of an unknown metal, resembling somewhat a mixture of aluminum and silver, and it must have weighed several tons.
> The town is full of people to-day who are viewing the wreck and gathering specimens of the strange metal from the debris. The pilot's funeral will take place at noon to-morrow.
The premise of an alien traveling all the way across the galaxy, only to crash into a windmill, is very amusing. Maybe it was a teenage alien joyriding his parental unit's spaceship.
I don't think whomever is in control of these objects are aliens from outer space either. And I don't think they make mistakes of crashing into windmills as well. But "they" are here for whatever reason.
The offspring and I stopped by our family cemetery plot last summer there in Aurora. He had never heard the story about how my great-grandmother, when living in Boyd, had met a peculiar man from out of town.
The family story is that he was the pilot of the craft and this is what explains my mothers' family's odd behaviour.
Or maybe they just lived in Wise county a little too long.
Just when you think there's a real possibility of exhumation and further analysis there's known disinformation circulating. What I would really like to see is X Ray photography.
Anyway, there is much written about this with some great research done by John Keel.