UFO Disclosure Group Releases Newest Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet UFO Encounter Video (cnn.com)

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.

Comments

Obviously

[I'm New Around Here]

They found Jonathon Livingston Seagull.

Nothing to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like a weather balloon to me.

Re:25kft?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

UFO

[aepervius]

UFO means unknown flying object. UFO does not mean alien. Just my 23 cents to those who will jump to conclusion. My own hypothesis are that the explanation are immensely far more likely to be something mundane which cannot be proven but neither can it be discarded, e.g. some dust before the equipment, insects or equally mundane stuff. Alien do not even come in the top 5.

Re:UFO

[swb]

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.

Re:And?

[taylorius]

You do know what the letters UFO stand for, right?

Not all that fast

[Lonewolf666]

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?

Parallax movement for stationary object

[DrTJ]

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

[bloodhawk]

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.

Re: Show me some G force god damnit!

[c6gunner]

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!

Re:25kft?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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 . . .

Sigh.

[ledow]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

O, I don't agree.
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 /. posting this, imo.

Re: The lock on means a solid object

[Applehu Akbar]

"...I am trained in gorilla warfare "

Mano a mano?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Show me some G force god damnit!

[houghi]

I wanted to verify your claim, but found no data on the subject. Ergo : you are right.