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Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency (US House of Congress hearings)
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- Published
- Jul 27 2023
- Word count
- 55 words
three people will be testifying:
Americans for Safe Aerospace is a "military pilot led nonprofit organization dedicated to aerospace safety and national security with a focus on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)"
Graves is their founder, and Commander Fravor is on their "leadership council".
the general pattern of their allegations is military pilots saying "I was flying and saw some Weird Shit"
people in the military are very often sleep-deprived. and for aircrews in particular, they're often issued stimulants in order to stay awake:
Stimulants & Sleep Aids in Military Aviation
The use of amphetamines in U.S. Air Force tactical operations during Desert Shield and Storm
Dextroamphetamine use during B-2 combat missions
US pilots blame drug for friendly fire deaths
an Occam's Razor explanation that I find much more plausible than aliens is simply that the pilots fucking hallucinated. possibly from sleep deprivation, possibly from amphetamines, possibly from anti-malarial drugs given to the US military that are known to cause hallucinations, possibly all of the above.
this leaves Grusch's allegations, which to me seem much more like the classic "grab bag of conspiracy theories" type of UFO allegation. from his wikipedia:
that's right, get your conspiracy theory bingo boards out, the Pope is part of the cover-up too.
and somehow, the Italian government also managed to keep the secret all this time? Berlusconi, when he was Prime Minister, was either not privy to the information, or was able to keep his mouth shut about it?
Now that is my kinda subcommittee hearing
But I'm with you, I've always fervently hoped for some Fringe/X-files thing to happen, but I'm skeptical and scientific enough to admit that I'm definitely still waiting.
The X-Files is one of my all time favorite TV shows, but yeah, I don't expect we'll get anything conclusive here. And I say this as someone who thinks (unintelligent) life in our solar system outside Earth and beyond is likely.
If you enjoy The X-files, i highly recommend Fringe. It's my all time favorite, and like you say, probably the only paranormal stuff we'll be seeing
Man, I need to give it another go because I bounced off fringe after the first season. And I love the actor in it who also plays Denethor in LOTR.
Oh his character, Walter, is the absolute highlight of the show. I can almost guarantee you'll appreciate the range he gets to display throughout the show. He's... not the same. And it's fantastic.
I second the recommendation for Fringe as it is also my favorite show of all time.
I knew I liked it here on Tildes lol
Any other recommendations? Clearly you have excellent taste
(is this appropriate on this thread? If I'm out of line going off-topic, someone please let me know)
I just labeled our conversation as off topic. I don't think it's otherwise a big deal unless the conversation gets too long wherein we should just make a new post.
I don't want to bog down the thread since we're off topic, but I'd also recommend Person of Interest if you haven't watched it.
There’s also the “pilot thought they saw something because they didn’t understand the instruments”.
At least a few of these “impossible moving objects” are artifacts on a camera being interpreted as moving of racing off
That doesn't explain stuff like the Fravor "Tic-Tac" sighting, where the same object was observed by multiple witnesses and showed up on instruments.
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/David-Fravor-Statement-for-House-Oversight-Committee.pdf
Fravor didn't record the Tic Tac video and the guy who did record it did not report actually seeing anything unusual and the video just shows a blob. Big deal.
According to Fravor's testimony, the Tic-Tac was directly observed by four different pilots, initially at ~20,000 feet and then to under 3,000 feet when they moved in to take a closer look at it. The FLIR footage was recorded later, from much further away.
Great. Good for him. That's not hard evidence.
I don’t know about the aliens. But I am certain that there are individuals and groups who try to get away with some high level stuff that is detrimental to us. I mean, the military did weaponize mosquitoes, and did test biowarfare on san Francisco. The PNAC fomented a baloney war. Baloney, but real, deadly, and destructive. The CNP got Roe reversed, and who knows what else. Vast troves of evidence regarding controversial events remains inaccessible to the People. And these are just the ones we know about. If, by way of pursuing ETs we can expose some of this stuff, I’m all for it.
It doesn't have to be aliens to be worth investigating. If China is flying advanced hypersonic drones above sensitive military installations and nuclear sites, that needs to be stopped. Hell, even if it's all delusion or grift, then that needs to be identified and rooted out, too.
for a selection of the other Very Serious Topics the House Oversight Committee has been tackling:
https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/
...and that's just the first 2 pages, covering the last 2 months of hearings.
besides the "Biden Criminal Investigation" you've got a bunch of grievances about covid (vaccine mandates, lab leaks, and church closures, oh my!), complaints about environmental regulation (including "cancelling" gas stoves), some border bullshit, and "election integrity" (which I'm sure is about Trump's Big Lie of the 2020 election being stolen).
out of curiosity, I thought I'd look back at this same time last year, for a comparison of what hearings the committee was holding under Democratic leadership...and they're not there. the "year" drop-down on that page just goes from 2023 to 2020. interesting. the rest of the years are continuous back to 2009. it seems like 2021 and 2022, two years when the committee was under Democratic control, were removed from that archive for some reason.
I disagree simply because this keeps the toddlers occupied.
Conservatives in power have proven to be horrendously damaging to the rights of the American people and at best have been brick walls to progress. They simply cannot be trusted to govern.
Ever taken a toddler into a room you can't leave with a lot of expensive things they can destroy? You give then something they can play with. UAPs are the "tablet for the toddler" in this scenario. If left to their own devices they would destroy the room.
If conservatives actually tried to tackle the real problems facing Americans, they'd make it worse.
American politics are such a tired subject.
Nobody cares, honestly.
The constant back and forth between two insanely polarised sides claiming it's the other's fault the country is fucked is a horse that was beat to death 20 years ago.
Can we move on.
Indifferent. Pretty much feels like the Oscars to me. I'll take 5 minutes to read about it the next day and not waste hours watching it.
Excited but mostly because I'm amused by the inversion of tin-foil hats on the topic today vs when I was younger.
90s tin-foil hat: "UFOs are real and the government is trying to drum up other issues to distract you from them."
Today's tin-foil hat: "The 50% of UAPs the AARO reports as 1-4m metallic spheres are probably nothing and "disclosure" is just the government trying to distract you from the real issues."
Indifferent but also open minded if somehow it would turn out there are aliens.
So far every recorded phenomenon could be easily debunked.
I don’t have a catalog, but I feel pretty confident this is a false statement. I don’t have any information, but I’m for sure there is way more going on in the universe than we know about. Simply because a phenomenon is weird and unexplained doesn’t make it supernatural or even space alien. But to assume there are not phenomena beyond our understanding is hubris.
Sorry, I made a mental shortcut, I meant every video that I saw was debunked.
I also would imagine that anything that didn't have explanation would be more popular.
Believe me, I wish aliens were here, but I'm not holding my breath lol. It would be interesting but there is literally no compelling evidence for it.
I just want to see if it will be enough to satisfy the theorists. "The truth is out there", as they say, but what is the question? Also, a large part about conspiracy theorism is sowing distrust in authoritative figures, so when the question (whatever it is) doesn't get answered by government officials, or the answer isn't satisfactory, that irritates the minds of those who have a propensity for paranoia, violence, etc.
Many truths and facts have been given these past couple of years, but they have fallen on deaf ears for many people. This makes me doubt that the truth (aliens have not visited us, or the government doesn't possess alien tech) will be accepted.
Furthermore, is the question sincere and well-thought? A truthful answer requires a question equally as coherent and honest, after all.
I suppose how I feel depends on the credibility of the whistle blowers along with what they hsve to say.
It is a bit exciting to think about though.
I'm skeptical that any of this is actual non-human intelligence, maybe secret military aircraft developed in tandem with companies like Lockheed, BAE, Northrop etc. There could maybe be something there, tech being unnecessarily hidden using nuclear and atomic secrets acts for decades and decades rather than being opened up to the scientific community for further development.
As a huge X-Files fan I'd love there to be some crazy cover up involving deals with extra terrestrials, shadowy clandestine government cabals, and reverse engineering of alien technology but I'm incredibly doubtful.
I'm more interested in Chuck Schumers amendment to have all of the UAP stuff declassified anyway. The House hearing probably won't tell us anything interesting since anything classified won't be spoken about publicly.
I mean the purpose of Area 51 is to test experimental aircraft, such as the U-2 or testing Soviet aircraft, and that base is the heart of many conspiracy theories about aliens. So you might be not to far off of it being humans testing new things.
And I agree with @EndGameOmega had said in their post. In that if it is another country's, namely China, spy drone it makes no sense to blow that open to the public. Mostly because it is showing China our hand, that we know what they are doing and in doing so China will try to improve these drones.