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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Why, I don't understand how explaining quantum physics as "when things are really small they exist in two places at once until you look at them" does not adequately summarize it in a manner consumable by the average person

Well, the main thing is that explanation is wrong

Having objects in two different locations and then one suddenly disappearing because someone looked breaks conservation of momentum and energy. That is a pretty big no-no in physics

A better explanation might be:

"For very small objects, the possible places it could be each have a probability that it is there and we do not know where it is until we look. Once we do look, however, it becomes guaranteed that the object was at that location at that time. If we took a time machine back and repeated the experiment again, taking our observation at the exact same time, the object would be found at that position every time we did it, regardless of the probability that it was there before we first looked."

But really, quantum mechanics is pretty mind bending and a lot of people will not get it. People like certainty and quantum mechanics has uncertainty as a fundamental concept.

Well, disappointment time: part of the report will remain classified.

While the Pentagon says they have no evidence the craft are alien, they also have no idea what they are, stating that if Russian or Chinese, they'd have to be so far ahead of US development of similar technologies, particularly hypersonics, that it's unlikely, but a concern all the same.

Over 120 incidents in the last ten years could not be explained, and will be in the report.

And theres part of the problem - the Russians and Chinese have been advertising and claiming some very advanced capabilities for the past decade +, particularly in the field of hypersonics. Western observers have largely dismissed the claims as nonsense - not necessarily because the claims are impossible, but because it would mean acknowledging that the Russians or Chinese did something better than the US, which isn't really out of the question (and in fact the Soviets did have a huge edge over the US in certain key technological areas, something which American defense analysts to this day will only reluctantly admit to - it stands to reason that Russia has managed to maintain at least some of these edges). In short, the dismissal is more symptomatic of hubris than anything else, many observers and analysts already believe that China and/or Russia may have a slight edge over the US in terms of hypersonics already.

What if the claims weren't nonsense and the edge is larger than we've realized?

While I accept your point is entirely valid, it would have to be the first time since WW2 where one side has made strides that the other hasn't broadly matched.

Even then, things the Nazis were doing were known, even if they weren't understood.

For China, and especially Russia, to have apparently done nothing of note in terms of aeronautics all through the cold war that wasn't largely matched by the West, or at least aware of, to in the space of 30 years or so achieve things so far ahead that the west isn't aware of?

That strikes me as a story on a par with aliens in terms of its mind blowing capacity.

 Azreal13 wrote:
While I accept your point is entirely valid, it would have to be the first time since WW2 where one side has made strides that the other hasn't broadly matched.

Even then, things the Nazis were doing were known, even if they weren't understood.

For China, and especially Russia, to have apparently done nothing of note in terms of aeronautics all through the cold war that wasn't largely matched by the West, or at least aware of, to in the space of 30 years or so achieve things so far ahead that the west isn't aware of?

That strikes me as a story on a par with aliens in terms of its mind blowing capacity.

If the advance is based upon just one or two very key disruptions in physics/aerodynamics, and the discovery was made by the military? It wouldn't surprise me if it was kept top secret, rather than being filtered out to the rest of the aviation/civil industry. Having one or two key aces in the event of war would be worth the cost.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they deliberately engineered the craft to look like UFO's on the basis that it would make foreign governments discount sightings. In the same way the US could use the myth to hide weapons tests, there's nothing stopping foreigners doing the same thing. And the result would be identical; no-one would believe anyone who saw anything significantly enough to fund a counter-weapons or observation program. Basic psyops.

Though I'd put money on the Russians over the Chinese. The Chinese are only just leaving the 'let's buy a rusted Soviet aircraft carrier and try to copy an American stealth fighter through binoculars' stage.

 Ketara wrote:

If the advance is based upon just one or two very key disruptions in physics/aerodynamics, and the discovery was made by the military? It wouldn't surprise me if it was kept top secret, rather than being filtered out to the rest of the aviation/civil industry. Having one or two key aces in the event of war would be worth the cost.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they deliberately engineered the craft to look like UFO's on the basis that it would make foreign governments discount sightings. In the same way the US could use the myth to hide weapons tests, there's nothing stopping foreigners doing the same thing. And the result would be identical; no-one would believe anyone who saw anything significantly enough to fund a counter-weapons or observation program. Basic psyops.

Though I'd put money on the Russians over the Chinese. The Chinese are only just leaving the 'let's buy a rusted Soviet aircraft carrier and try to copy an American stealth fighter through binoculars' stage.

If there is an advance in aerodynamics that allows you to make aircraft which are so far beyond the current designs then the appearance of the craft will be determined by the requirements of that advance. You won't be able to make it look like a UFO unless that shape is what gives the required aerodynamics.

And that is easy to test in any wind tunnel coupled with aerodynamic flow software or just through pure simulation.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

If there is an advance in aerodynamics that allows you to make aircraft which are so far beyond the current designs then the appearance of the craft will be determined by the requirements of that advance. You won't be able to make it look like a UFO unless that shape is what gives the required aerodynamics.

And that is easy to test in any wind tunnel coupled with aerodynamic flow software or just through pure simulation.

That's why I said, 'physics/aerodynamics'.

The logical advance which might make it possible would be control over gravity. If you can exert attractive and repulsive forces sufficiently powerfully, you'd be able to accelerate and move in such a fashion as to be impossible for anything susceptible to Earth's own pull. It's also a very obvious blind spot in Western scientific theories.

For China, and especially Russia, to have apparently done nothing of note in terms of aeronautics all through the cold war that wasn't largely matched by the West, or at least aware of, to in the space of 30 years or so achieve things so far ahead that the west isn't aware of?

This is just grossly inaccurate. Russian rocketry was generally well in advance of the Wests own rocket tech - they might not have put a man on the moon or completed their own space shuttle system, but that was due to a deficiency in other technologies. Its not out of the question to think that they were able to leverage that into a hypersonic boost-glide system. By extension, Russian missile tech was generally more advanced than American missiles in almost every category (ballistic, air to air, surface to air, anti ship, anti tank, etc.), generally having higher speeds, larger payloads, longer ranges, and greater maneuverability than western equivalents, as well as more sophisticated guidance and counter-EW capabilities than American equivalents. That advantage continues to exist in many areas to this date, many of the capabilities in these fields weren't matched by the US until 15-25 years after the Soviets/Russians first demonstrated them - its safe to assume that the Russians weren't resting on their laurels for 2 decades and continued advancing those techs over that timeframe. The Soviets/Russians even have underwater rockets, like the Shkval rocket-torpedo which can supercavitate to something like 250 mph (~5x faster than any known piece of underwater hardware developed by the US and western powers). For a long time it was assumed that they were unguided/could only fire in a straight line, but nope turns out they can even thrust vector and maneuver on-target. Unless theres some real secret squirrel capability that the US military developed in total secret and has not advertised at all (possible, but unlikely considering how long ago the Soviets were able to publicly demonstrate the capability), the US is still far far behind in this arena and public research and demonstration of supercavitation tech indicates that we are struggling to build anything even remotely similar. If the Soviets were able to make these things operational in 1977, what might that tech have advanced to over the next 50 years of development? Something like the Status-6 Poseidon torpedo, i.e. the Doomsday Torpedo, which many western observers initially dismissed as nonsense?

I'm less familiar with Chinese tech, but what little I do know of indicates that they likewise have specific areas of technological competitive advantage over the US, at least some of which could conceivably be linked to some of what is being witnessed - drone swarms and small drones for example. DJI, a Chinese firm, has a roughly 80% global marketshare on small drone and consumer/government grade drone tech, to the point that US government agencies purchase and use them because theres nobody in the US or the West that can offer comparable capabilities.

 Ketara wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
While I accept your point is entirely valid, it would have to be the first time since WW2 where one side has made strides that the other hasn't broadly matched.

Even then, things the Nazis were doing were known, even if they weren't understood.

For China, and especially Russia, to have apparently done nothing of note in terms of aeronautics all through the cold war that wasn't largely matched by the West, or at least aware of, to in the space of 30 years or so achieve things so far ahead that the west isn't aware of?

That strikes me as a story on a par with aliens in terms of its mind blowing capacity.

If the advance is based upon just one or two very key disruptions in physics/aerodynamics, and the discovery was made by the military? It wouldn't surprise me if it was kept top secret, rather than being filtered out to the rest of the aviation/civil industry. Having one or two key aces in the event of war would be worth the cost.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they deliberately engineered the craft to look like UFO's on the basis that it would make foreign governments discount sightings. In the same way the US could use the myth to hide weapons tests, there's nothing stopping foreigners doing the same thing. And the result would be identical; no-one would believe anyone who saw anything significantly enough to fund a counter-weapons or observation program. Basic psyops.

Though I'd put money on the Russians over the Chinese. The Chinese are only just leaving the 'let's buy a rusted Soviet aircraft carrier and try to copy an American stealth fighter through binoculars' stage.

I agree that it would likely be the Russians if it were anyone, they've been the de facto arms supplier for most of the "developing" world for a long time now.

But I'm skeptical about keeping it under wraps, I don't mean a deliberate filtration of info out to a wider audience so much as espionage and surveillance. I mean, North Korea can't fart without it being observed and recorded, I find it hard to believe that a technology has been developed by the official Big Bad™ of the world that there is zero knowledge of. Complete understanding of? Fair enough. But an absolute absence of any clue about what they're up to and what they may be able to do with it in the golden age of information? I'm not so sure. I'd leave room for the possibility, but I'd be doubtful.

 Ketara wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

If there is an advance in aerodynamics that allows you to make aircraft which are so far beyond the current designs then the appearance of the craft will be determined by the requirements of that advance. You won't be able to make it look like a UFO unless that shape is what gives the required aerodynamics.

And that is easy to test in any wind tunnel coupled with aerodynamic flow software or just through pure simulation.

That's why I said, 'physics/aerodynamics'.

The logical advance which might make it possible would be control over gravity. If you can exert attractive and repulsive forces sufficiently powerfully, you'd be able to accelerate and move in such a fashion as to be impossible for anything susceptible to Earth's own pull. It's also a very obvious blind spot in Western scientific theories.

It isn't a blind spot, it is flat out physically impossible. It's like saying being able to turn off the charge of an electron and make it neutral. There is no antigravitational force, unless you can make something with negative mass. Something which has never been observed. The closest to it is dark energy which is driving the acceleration of universal expansion, yet this only affects stuff on cosmological scales.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

If there is an advance in aerodynamics that allows you to make aircraft which are so far beyond the current designs then the appearance of the craft will be determined by the requirements of that advance. You won't be able to make it look like a UFO unless that shape is what gives the required aerodynamics.

And that is easy to test in any wind tunnel coupled with aerodynamic flow software or just through pure simulation.

That's why I said, 'physics/aerodynamics'.

The logical advance which might make it possible would be control over gravity. If you can exert attractive and repulsive forces sufficiently powerfully, you'd be able to accelerate and move in such a fashion as to be impossible for anything susceptible to Earth's own pull. It's also a very obvious blind spot in Western scientific theories.

It isn't a blind spot, it is flat out physically impossible. It's like saying being able to turn off the charge of an electron and make it neutral. There is no antigravitational force, unless you can make something with negative mass. Something which has never been observed. The closest to it is dark energy which is driving the acceleration of universal expansion, yet this only affects stuff on cosmological scales.

I swear we've already done the discussion of the scientifically possible a few pages back....

chaos0xomega wrote:
Russian rocketry was generally well in advance of the Wests own rocket tech - they might not have put a man on the moon or completed their own space shuttle system, but that was due to a deficiency in other technologies.

This is not true. The russians were unable to reach the moon because they could not build a rocket engine with the power of the F-1, and tried to instead accomplish the required thrust with a larger number of smaller engines, which drastically increases the complexity of the design as each rocket needs to fire simultaneously, be able to be cut off simultaneously, throttled simultaneously etc.

Sure, the F-1 wasn't a closed loop engine, but they actually worked and were more advanced than any of the russian engines in a different area because it was able to make use of cryogenic fuels, rather than the highly toxic and corrosive fuels the russians were using. And a rocket that is less efficient but actually accomplishes its goals is a better rocket than one which doesn't.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

If the advance is based upon just one or two very key disruptions in physics/aerodynamics, and the discovery was made by the military? It wouldn't surprise me if it was kept top secret, rather than being filtered out to the rest of the aviation/civil industry. Having one or two key aces in the event of war would be worth the cost.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they deliberately engineered the craft to look like UFO's on the basis that it would make foreign governments discount sightings. In the same way the US could use the myth to hide weapons tests, there's nothing stopping foreigners doing the same thing. And the result would be identical; no-one would believe anyone who saw anything significantly enough to fund a counter-weapons or observation program. Basic psyops.

Though I'd put money on the Russians over the Chinese. The Chinese are only just leaving the 'let's buy a rusted Soviet aircraft carrier and try to copy an American stealth fighter through binoculars' stage.

If there is an advance in aerodynamics that allows you to make aircraft which are so far beyond the current designs then the appearance of the craft will be determined by the requirements of that advance. You won't be able to make it look like a UFO unless that shape is what gives the required aerodynamics.

And that is easy to test in any wind tunnel coupled with aerodynamic flow software or just through pure simulation.

 Ketara wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

If there is an advance in aerodynamics that allows you to make aircraft which are so far beyond the current designs then the appearance of the craft will be determined by the requirements of that advance. You won't be able to make it look like a UFO unless that shape is what gives the required aerodynamics.

And that is easy to test in any wind tunnel coupled with aerodynamic flow software or just through pure simulation.

That's why I said, 'physics/aerodynamics'.

The logical advance which might make it possible would be control over gravity. If you can exert attractive and repulsive forces sufficiently powerfully, you'd be able to accelerate and move in such a fashion as to be impossible for anything susceptible to Earth's own pull. It's also a very obvious blind spot in Western scientific theories.

Nothing that advanced is really required here. As I stated before there are existing rotorcraft and aerostatic technologies that could account for some of the observed capability. They are uncommon and largely experimental or were dismissed as having no practical application 50-70 years ago, etc. and thus even experienced military pilots would have zero familiarity with them or their capabilities - some of which would or could have potentially unusual shapes or appearances. Some of what was observed could be fairly mundane, but if the pilots and ship crew making the observation are only familiar with fixed wing aircraft, conventional helicopters, and hot air balloons then seeing something like an Avrocar or a Triebflügel or a Coleopter/annular wing or a Kytoon or a Flettner Rotor or a Fanwing or a cyclorotor or.... Theres even more obscure stuff out there, like the Russian Thermoplan. Stick a stop secret program with a military budget behind any of these technologies and you could end up with something that looks really out of this world with unusual capabilities that can be confused for something out of this world and appears wholly unfamiliar to someone who has thousands of hours of experience flying but is otherwise fairly mundane.

 Ketara wrote:


I swear we've already done the discussion of the scientifically possible a few pages back....

Which highlighted some major misunderstandings on your part. Quantum mechanics is not separate from classical mechanics. You can derive classical mechanics, such as Newton's laws, from quantum mechanics by applying the required conditions to the equations. Classical mechanics is just an approximation which is accurate enough for the macroscopic world, like how galilean relativity is just an approximation of special relativity which is useable when the velocities in question are small compared to the speed of light, Newton's law of universal gravitation is just an approximation of general relativity etc.

Th the soyuz rocket (russian) has been the only approved vehice capable of docking with the ISS from 2011 to 2021. NASA scrapped its space shuttle in 2011 and switched to the soyuz. Of course your average person wont know as no credit is given.

That decision IMO is driven purely by cost effectiveness rather than anything else. But still, That's is a impressive endorsement and possibly a statement of capabilities. .

So who knows, maybe the tic tac is Russian seeing as they are more capable of cost efficient space travel than USA.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Russian rocketry was generally well in advance of the Wests own rocket tech - they might not have put a man on the moon or completed their own space shuttle system, but that was due to a deficiency in other technologies.

This is not true. The russians were unable to reach the moon because they could not build a rocket engine with the power of the F-1, and tried to instead accomplish the required thrust with a larger number of smaller engines, which drastically increases the complexity of the design as each rocket needs to fire simultaneously, be able to be cut off simultaneously, throttled simultaneously etc.

Sure, they weren't closed loop engines, but they actually worked. And a rocket that is less efficient but actually accomplishes its goals is a better rocket than one which doesn't.

It is true and you're only telling part of the story. The struggles the Soviets had can be put down to a result of politics and interpersonal squabbles more than it is a technological failing. Valentin Glushko had very simple and workable designs (proven by the success of Proton, Zenit, and Energia) to produce engines that were theoretically more capable than the F-1, but his designs were dismissed due to the Soviets (specifically Sergei Korolev) belief that the toxicity of the hypergolic propellants that Glushkos designs would have required would have made them a safety issue. As a result they opted to pursue designs based on safer fuels which the Soviets had little experience using. Glushko refused to be involved with the project, as did other experienced rocket designers, and thus an engineer who was an experienced jet engine designer with no rocket design experience (Nikolai Kuznetsov) was brought in to lead the rocket design. At that point Glushko and other more experienced engineers were put on what was essentially a parallel spaceflight program owing to their political connections and political favoritism, etc. which resulted in a cut in funding and resources/talent into the moon program.

Due to a lack of budget and experience Kuznetsov and given tight time constraints Kuznetsov did not have the opportunity to even attempt to develop and test a large engine comparable to the F-1, which forced him to pursue an unnecessarily complex design which utilized smaller rockets (which you referenced) in order to circumvent the combustion instability issues that the Soviets had encountered while attempting to use LOX/RP1 fuels in the past. Funding issues meant that the engine was never actually ground tested before being sent to flight test on the N-1 - something which most engineers regard as absolute insanity given how advanced and novel the the engine design actually was. The lack of testing proved to be the N-1s failure, as the design of the fuel distribution system essentially doomed it to failure - but the issues would have been detected in ground test and the solution to the issue was not beyond the abilities of Soviet engineering. FYI - American engineers encountered the same exact issues with the F-1 that the Soviets had experienced attempting to build large LOX/RP1 engines, but they were given both time and budget to do significant amounts of testing to develop a relatively simple workaround which the Soviets only managed to figure out years later. Interestingly, the design of the N-1 (with the fuel distribution issues worked out) has basically become the standard of modern American rocketry, so the Soviets were somewhat ahead of their time which reinforces the thesis of their superiority in terms of rocket design.

Most analysts are in agreement that the Soviets would have been able to build something comparable or superior to the F-1 had they been given time and budget and not had their resources split amongst several competing programs, some of which were destined to failure as a result of being helmed by inexperienced engineers and incompetent managers.

Guys, I hate to point out the obvious but while I'll grant the Russians have created some quality hyper-sonic missiles, these are throwing a lot of what we know about physics out the window. We're talking major materials breakthroughs (a field neither Russia nor China is known for) alone, and that's assuming it's unmanned.

While I won't deny it's possible for Russia or China to be ahead of the US, we're talking decades, maybe centuries ahead. Not seeing it.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:


I swear we've already done the discussion of the scientifically possible a few pages back....

Which highlighted some major misunderstandings on your part. Quantum mechanics is not separate from classical mechanics. You can derive classical mechanics, such as Newton's laws, from quantum mechanics by applying the required conditions to the equations. Classical mechanics is just an approximation which is accurate enough for the macroscopic world, like how galilean relativity is just an approximation of special relativity which is useable when the velocities in question are small compared to the speed of light, Newton's law of universal gravitation is just an approximation of general relativity etc.

My posts were more along the lines of 'The laws of physics are understood to be absolute until they turn out not to be, and then science comes up with a spanking new theory (or adjusts the old one) to explain how the impossible is now possible'.

So yeah. You can claim that control of gravity is impossible. For sure. By contemporary public understandings of physics. That is, until something proves it not to be.

We apparently have here (according to the leaks I'm reading about this report), a repeatedly occurring phenomenon, where aerial devices are not behaving in line with known physics. One that has been observed on many hundreds of occasions, by different means, by different observors. This means one of three things.

1) The accounts are all lies or exaggerations for some unknown nefarious purpose.
2) The accounts are mistaken and misinterpreting what they are observing.
3) Somebody (whether aliens or humans) has devised a way of defying the laws of physics (or 'classical mechanics').

Logically speaking, one of these three is true. The likelihood of it being 1) or 2) goes down proportionately to the numbers of observers and methods. From what I'm reading (correct me if I'm wrong), we have literally hundreds of military personnel observing through multiple means (eyeballs, radar, and a few others). If that is in fact, actually the case, then the odds of it being 1 or 2 are likely to be slimmer than 3. And 3 is, when you really get down to it, no more unlikely than any other major unforeseen scientific advance. Whether it boils down to gravity or some other means is really beside the question; it's still something in advance of contemporary physics that implies a significant rewrite/adjustment of theory.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Nothing that advanced is really required here. As I stated before there are existing rotorcraft and aerostatic technologies that could account for some of the observed capability. They are uncommon and largely experimental or were dismissed as having no practical application 50-70 years ago, etc. and thus even experienced military pilots would have zero familiarity with them or their capabilities - some of which would or could have potentially unusual shapes or appearances. Some of what was observed could be fairly mundane, but if the pilots and ship crew making the observation are only familiar with fixed wing aircraft, conventional helicopters, and hot air balloons then seeing something like an Avrocar or a Triebflügel or a Coleopter/annular wing or a Kytoon or a Flettner Rotor or a Fanwing or a cyclorotor or.... Theres even more obscure stuff out there, like the Russian Thermoplan. Stick a stop secret program with a military budget behind any of these technologies and you could end up with something that looks really out of this world with unusual capabilities that can be confused for something out of this world and appears wholly unfamiliar to someone who has thousands of hours of experience flying but is otherwise fairly mundane.

Perhaps this is the case instead. I'm simply going off what's been written by people who are theoretically more familiar with the capabilities and limitations of aerial craft than myself. My own studies more or less cut off with the Sopwith Camel.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Guys, I hate to point out the obvious but while I'll grant the Russians have created some quality hyper-sonic missiles, these are throwing a lot of what we know about physics out the window. We're talking major materials breakthroughs (a field neither Russia nor China is known for) alone, and that's assuming it's unmanned.

While I won't deny it's possible for Russia or China to be ahead of the US, we're talking decades, maybe centuries ahead. Not seeing it.

As I've stated and explained several times over the past several pages, almost none of the actually visibly observed capabilities come even remotely close to defying laws of physics. The most extreme claims of capability and physics-defying flight characteristics come from radar readings which can be explained as a result of electronic warfare capabilities. The closest anyone has actually come to actually seeing one of these things defy physical law went unrecorded (object observed climbing and diving tens of thousands of feet in seconds through FLIR - FLIR engineers that worked on the system used to observe it have come forward postulating it was the result of a known glitch in the FLIR system), the segment of the observations of that same object that were recorded don't show it doing anything of the sort, it just floats there (in a manner similar to a high altitude balloon).

As for materials breakthroughs, I think thats an erroneous take on your part. Can't speak for China, but as far as Russia is concerned - they pioneered the production of use of titanium and titanium alloys in a variety of applications and Russia has continued to demonstrate titanium working capabilities that the US has yet to match. The flip side of that is that is that iron and steel metallurgy in the USSR and modern Russia is *generally* inferior in terms of the purity of the metal as well as the precision with which they are able to work said metals which is why their jet engines are inferior to American engines - but there are certain things that they do very well in this regard though, such as precision timing clocks, to the point that the US defense industry uses Russian clocks because we simply haven't been able to build anything to match. The Soviets also pioneered the development of synthetic diaomonds and by extension the production of diamond nanocrystals/nanodiamonds. The Soviets and Russians have also been a leader in developing a number of fiber-based materials and fabrics. The first composite armor system was deployed by the Russians in the T-64 in the form of Combination K and supposedly their most modern tanks are using a more advanced composite armor system than anything used elsewhere. etc etc etc

While I wouldn't characterize Russia as possessing superior materials science and engineering technologies, to say they aren't known for material breakthroughs is just wrong.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The most extreme claims of capability and physics-defying flight characteristics come from radar readings which can be explained as a result of electronic warfare capabilities. The closest anyone has actually come to actually seeing one of these things defy physical law went unrecorded.

Then explain to me why they're not white hot from aerodynamic heating. The concord, far more aerodynamic in form than these, would reach temps above 300 degrees F traveling at mach 2.4

And, again, that would be a mighty unusual, and very specific, effect to generate, for an ewar package. Radar determines speed via the doppler effect. Because of the variety of frequencies involved, and the very specific information it would have to spoof, plus it's dubious use in combat, I have to question this explanation.

Aircraft, with certain very specialized exceptions, don't typically carry powerful radar compared to ships and surface installations because of size and power requirements. I can much more easily believe a drone being able to carry off fooling an aircraft. But spoofing the US navy's best surface radars I find less believable.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The most extreme claims of capability and physics-defying flight characteristics come from radar readings which can be explained as a result of electronic warfare capabilities. The closest anyone has actually come to actually seeing one of these things defy physical law went unrecorded.

Then explain to me why they're not white hot from aerodynamic heating. The concord, far more aerodynamic in form than these, would reach temps above 300 degrees F traveling at mach 2.4

Because none of them have actually moved that fast?Thats literally the entire point of what you responded to.

The fastest recorded speed for any of these craft was 200mph or so), radar and non visual sources indicate faster movement, but that hasn't been visibly witnessed or confirmed and that level of performance can be spoofed on radar withh EW techniques, as per my previous post.

And, again, that would be a mighty unusual, and very specific, effect to generate, for an ewar package. Radar determines speed via the doppler effect. Because of the variety of frequencies involved, and the very specific information it would have to spoof, plus it's dubious use in combat, I have to question this explanation.

Its not a specific or unusual capability by any means, just one of many ways to defeat a missile. Not going to say much more on the topic than that.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Why, I don't understand how explaining quantum physics as "when things are really small they exist in two places at once until you look at them" does not adequately summarize it in a manner consumable by the average person

Well, the main thing is that explanation is wrong

Having objects in two different locations and then one suddenly disappearing because someone looked breaks conservation of momentum and energy. That is a pretty big no-no in physics

A better explanation might be:

"For very small objects, the possible places it could be each have a probability that it is there and we do not know where it is until we look. Once we do look, however, it becomes guaranteed that the object was at that location at that time. If we took a time machine back and repeated the experiment again, taking our observation at the exact same time, the object would be found at that position every time we did it, regardless of the probability that it was there before we first looked."

But really, quantum mechanics is pretty mind bending and a lot of people will not get it. People like certainty and quantum mechanics has uncertainty as a fundamental concept.

My statement was wrong, because that was the point; oversimplification to the point of being incorrect. That said, what you are saying isn't how it works either. Best I can say is the Shroedinger's cat analogy is how things actually work on the quantum level; the cat is both alive and dead, simultaneously, until you open the box. It is terrifying how we have repeatedly demonstrated this to be the case when it flies so thoroughly against what we know to be sensical.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The most extreme claims of capability and physics-defying flight characteristics come from radar readings which can be explained as a result of electronic warfare capabilities. The closest anyone has actually come to actually seeing one of these things defy physical law went unrecorded.

Then explain to me why they're not white hot from aerodynamic heating. The concord, far more aerodynamic in form than these, would reach temps above 300 degrees F traveling at mach 2.4

And, again, that would be a mighty unusual, and very specific, effect to generate, for an ewar package. Radar determines speed via the doppler effect. Because of the variety of frequencies involved, and the very specific information it would have to spoof, plus it's dubious use in combat, I have to question this explanation.

Aircraft, with certain very specialized exceptions, don't typically carry powerful radar compared to ships and surface installations because of size and power requirements. I can much more easily believe a drone being able to carry off fooling an aircraft. But spoofing the US navy's best surface radars I find less believable.

Also a lot of modern first world military platforms have radar and ladar, which uses laser pulses instead of microwave pulses. A system that could cause both to give a false speed reading may not actually exist yet, in any earthly technology.

I don't know of any military system which uses LIDAR in the way you claim, and that type of application would be a very advanced usage of the technology given the various limitations with it.

LIDAR is generally used in "visual range" applications as a rangefinder/target designator or for mapping stationary objects. It can be used for speed detection but the scenarios in which you could use it that way are currently limited. Given what we currently know about the UFO events theres a high probability that LIDAR was not involved other than the various encounters recorded via FLIR, all of which recorded the object aa being somewhere between stationary and approx. 200knots.

There is research into LIDAR in missile defense applications which would see it used in conjunction with AEGIS type systems at long ranges, etc but as far as I am aware that is still a theoretical capability that has not been deployed. Very much doubt they used LIDAR in any of the non-visual scenarios in which these objects were supposedly breaking physics.

I don't know, aliens seem far more likely to me than faulty readings on equipment made by the lowest bidder.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Its not a specific or unusual capability by any means, just one of many ways to defeat a missile. Not going to say much more on the topic than that.

A missile, yes, but a recently upgraded Arleigh Burke's sensor suite? Or the entire base at San Diego? Much more dubious on that.

And, again, you're ignoring their relative lack of aerodynamic form. Even at 200 miles an hour, at those altitudes, that's still greater than terminal velocity. You'll still have atmospheric friction.


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Cronch wrote:
I don't know, aliens seem far more likely to me than faulty readings on equipment made by the lowest bidder.

Individually, sure, but en mass? Probably not. What you're talking about would be the equivalent of every single rifle in a platoon spontaneously misfiring at the same time. The bulk of them would have gotten some accurate reading. Some of these took place over a few of the Navy' most important installations, like NBSD.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Its not a specific or unusual capability by any means, just one of many ways to defeat a missile. Not going to say much more on the topic than that.

A missile, yes, but a recently upgraded Arleigh Burke's sensor suite? Or the entire base at San Diego? Much more dubious on that.

And, again, you're ignoring their relative lack of aerodynamic form. Even at 200 miles an hour, at those altitudes, that's still greater than terminal velocity. You'll still have atmospheric friction.

It would depend on which systems and settings were being used to track the object. I very much doubt they were using full wartime power and settings. Beyond that AEGIS is not infallible, nor are its human operators, as we should have learned during the Iran Air Flight 655 disaster.

And theres nothing particularly non-aerodynamic about the forms, in fact from what we can see they generally are *very* aerodynamic, just not necessarily in terms of conventional design. And you can't possibly know what their terminal velocities are without knowing its mass, area, and drag coefficient - not that the terminal velocity matters anyway because thats only applicable to an object in freefall under the effects of gravity, and not an object in level powered flight as was seemingly the case in all the released visual recordings.


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Individually, sure, but en mass? Probably not. What you're talking about would be the equivalent of every single rifle in a platoon spontaneously misfiring at the same time. The bulk of them would have gotten some accurate reading. Some of these took place over a few of the Navy' most important installations, like NBSD.

Whos to say they didn't acquire an accurate reading? Again, performance within visual range (i.e when radar could be cross-refreenced with Mk1 eyeball and/or FLIR) was mundane, between 0 and 200knots, no sudden or extreme acceleration, relatively normal movement. It was only outside of visual range (i.e. requiring the use of radar or other sensor systems, the readings of which could not be confirmed visually) that these things were doing weird gak. Perhaps the visually confirmed performance were the accurate readings, and the gak that occurred outside of visual confirmation was false readings. It would certainly make sense as EWAR techniques are generally more effective at longer ranges, as once you approach a sensor systems burn through range a lot of jamming and spoofing techniques fall off the table. Would explain why aircraft radar at 20 miles and ship radar at 60+ miles were having trouble with it but within the 5-10 mile range at which these things were recorded via FLIR they were behaving relatively normal.

If one of these pilots could say "I saw this thing dart off faster than a speeding bullet from a complete standstill with my own eyes" it would be one thing, yet even the most ardent UFO believers among them say "I was not able to visually confirm any of what I was seeing on my radar or FLIR".

chaos0xomega wrote:

If one of these pilots could say "I saw this thing dart off faster than a speeding bullet from a complete standstill with my own eyes" it would be one thing, yet even the most ardent UFO believers among them say "I was not able to visually confirm any of what I was seeing on my radar or FLIR".

The Nimitz CAG said exactly that. It was approaching him, and then vanished faster than the eye could follow. An object shaped like a tic tac and the size of an F18. It was reacquired by USS Princeton's radar 60 miles away a few seconds later. Parts of the incident were caught on camera. There are, supposedly, 120 incidents like that in the report that supposed to be released soon.

 BaronIveagh wrote:


Individually, sure, but en mass? Probably not. What you're talking about would be the equivalent of every single rifle in a platoon spontaneously misfiring at the same time. The bulk of them would have gotten some accurate reading. Some of these took place over a few of the Navy' most important installations, like NBSD.

120-something reports over 20 years. That's around 6 reports a year, that's such a statistically insignificant amount that it makes them being aliens even less probable.

I have seen many Unidentified Flying Objects. Do I think a single one of them came from another planet? No.
They were flying objects I could not identify.