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UFO Reports Demand Greater Transparency, Lawmakers Say (washingtonpost.com) 79

An hours-long discussion on Capitol Hill captured the intensifying public interest in the unexplained and how authorities investigate such reports. From a report: A small group of House lawmakers called Wednesday for greater transparency in the government's reporting on encounters with unidentified phenomena, in an unusual congressional hearing featuring the testimony of UFO witnesses. But the hearing, which one freshman Democrat remarked was the most bipartisan discussion he'd seen in his seven months on Capitol Hill, oscillated between statements of concern about the potential national security threat posed by unknown objects flying close to U.S. military aircraft and more extreme allusions to government conspiracies to hide the existence of alien lifeforms. Convened by a House Oversight subcommittee, the hours-long discussion captured the intensifying public interest in the unexplained and what federal authorities are doing to document and investigate such reports.

"We're not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing -- sorry to disappoint about half y'all," Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said. "We're just going to get to the facts. We're going to uncover the cover up." In response to reported encounters by Navy pilots, the U.S. military and the intelligence community have sought to more closely analyze such incidents. The sightings, including some that are believed to be drones or unmanned craft -- like the Chinese surveillance airship shot down in U.S. airspace earlier this year -- have fueled concerns that American adversaries could have developed new technologies that pose a threat to U.S. security. The Pentagon has implemented new policies meant to encourage military personnel to come forward if they see something unusual so it can be investigated and accounted for, and last year established what it calls the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to further study such reports. NASA has undertaken a similar independent initiative.

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UFO Reports Demand Greater Transparency, Lawmakers Say

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  • Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jslolam ( 6781710 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @09:54AM (#63718172)

    The government must be really worried about the recent child trafficking allegations to spring this UFO/alien distraction. :)

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @09:58AM (#63718190)
      The "hearing" was a "how do claim something without proof, but still get people to believe it".

      If when they said "I talked to a guy who knows a guy" didnt trigger a BS alarm, then we are doomed because they believed their friend who had a girlfriend/boyfriend, two towns away and still do.
      • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:46AM (#63718322)

        >If when they said "I talked to a guy who knows a guy" didnt trigger a BS alarm, then we are doomed

        Large portions of the US have spent generations deliberately preventing their populations from developing critical thinking skills, then along came mindless entertainment for profit and perfected by modern techniques to have a go at everyone else.

        As ye sow so shall ye reap.

      • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @11:02AM (#63718362)

        The "hearing" was a "how do claim something without proof, but still get people to believe it". If when they said "I talked to a guy who knows a guy" didnt trigger a BS alarm, then we are doomed because they believed their friend who had a girlfriend/boyfriend, two towns away and still do.

        We are in the age of reality Television, where it has taken over the weaker minds, and many of the weak minds are in power now.

        This Republican gambit, in addition to their desparate attempt to deflect from their following a traitor who gives away Top secret information to our enemies, they are the selfsame people who watch and believe in brain dead programs like ancient Aliens, Finding Bigfoot and the other programming designed for stupid people.

        So of course, the conspiracy minded people will believe every word uttered on Ancient Aliens, and likewise believe that the Pelosi government H^H^H^H^H^ US Government knows all manner of facts, that the Government captures and reverse engineers all of these alien spaceships, and, and, and, hold on a second.

        How is it that while the US government is in possession of technology that is not constrained by the speed of light, and moves in and out of lightspeed, and has inertial dampers that allow these aliens to instantly turn - how is it that geniuses like Elon Musk are rebuilding things like the Soviet N1 Rocket in a modern version known as Starship? A 30 plus engine behemoth when we already have Trans-C ships available right now? Makes no sense, and a genius like Musk with his superhuman deductive powers would probably be called in, given the clearances, determine the technology, build it, and we'd be on our way to andromeda by now.

        After the whistleblowers are done with the aliens, we'll have special testimony on how the government knows that Bigfoot are the actual aliens.

        Or something something. What an embarrassment.

        • and a genius like Musk with his superhuman deductive powers

          Dude. Elon Musk has some imagination and money. He is NOT a genius. He is likely smarter than average, but that is not really a high bar to pass. The other billionaires are lacking in imagination.

          • and a genius like Musk with his superhuman deductive powers

            Dude. Elon Musk has some imagination and money. He is NOT a genius. He is likely smarter than average, but that is not really a high bar to pass. The other billionaires are lacking in imagination.

            I probably could have phrased that better. Musk does have imagination, but has fallen for the idea that anything he thinks of can be done. Some things like Spacex are a good thing, Tesla was pretty good, but it is getting outdated now. Some things like the hyperloop, the tractor, and maybe even the pickup, and then there is the starship.

            I'm not even all that concerned about him - it's whatever money he can wrangle from the Government in subsidies, it's his fans who have created a cult of personality, not

      • We've entered the Post-Evidence Age. It isn't cool anymore, because it gets the wrong people in trouble.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Bullshit. Memories are short. Humans have always been emotional, panicky herd animals. Red scares, witch trials, satanist rituals in elementary schools, pizza parlour basements.

          Watching US congress members tie themselves in knots over aliens and UFOs that are stars is admittedly more entertaining than watching them persecute people who might have talked to someone who might have been a communist once, or freaking out about dudes who like to wear dresses.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      Is it still happening in the basement of that pizza restaurant?

      • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @11:09AM (#63718376)

        Is it still happening in the basement of that pizza restaurant?

        What people don't know is that Musk build a hyperloop under the Pizzagate place that connects to Area 51. Its exit point is the studio where Stanley Kubrick filmed the Moon landing Hoax. Gets Hillary and O'Blama there in 3 minutes tops. Since we don't need that studio any more, that's where they store the chemical they put in jet engines to make chemtrails, and the leftover 5G chips that were in the death juice - AKA Covid vaccines.

        It's also where the revived corpse of Franklin Delano Roosevelt worked out the Windmill turbine cancer implementation, and the Jewish space lasers are built.

        WAKE UP AMERICA!

        any questions?

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Congress is not "the government". It is one branch and very susceptible to bandwagons.

    • What, was MTG showing hot Hunter Biden nudes at the House Oversight Committee not good enough?
      • After all that D they simply needed some good old anal probing
        • I think there were in some of the pictures as well.

          https://nypost.com/2023/07/19/mtg-displays-sex-pics-of-hunter-biden-at-oversight-hearing/
    • Do they lead back to ruSSia? What about Epstein? No? Then fuck off.

    • Truthfully the aliens are involved in quite a lot of the unexplained disappearances. Do you have any idea how many people go missing without a trace every year?

  • Now dig up our ship so we can fix it and go home.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @10:34AM (#63718282)

    ... refuted claims that there was any sort of UFO cover-up. Speaking to media outlet cameras, blinking with eyelids that moved horizontally, the spokesperson made quite a convincing argument.

  • Here's an expert taking that famous combat FLIR video apart, 3 years ago. [youtube.com]

    Short version: It's basically a caustic IR lens-artifact and the strange, seemingly decoupled attitude changes result from the FLIRs gimbal tracking the lens-artifact along various axis of it's tracking system after lock-on to it was set by the operator and the jet is turning vis-a-vis geographic and horizontal orientation.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      And the visual sightings? Those are liars? Jeopardizing their military careers for a laugh?
      • by rahmrh ( 939610 )

        I am sure they all think they saw something. A shadow, a reflection, ball lightening, or something of ours that appeared to move weirdly because of they way their own aircraft was moving. Add in some high g turns reducing blood flow to the brain and/or less than perfect O2 delivery to the pilot's lungs and brain and quite a lot of weird stuff will be seen that is either not real or is something perfectly normal.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        People claim they've seen dead people after they've gone tits up. What's yer point?

    • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      That's all well and good, except that these things allegedly also appeared on radar of both the tracking aircraft and surface ships. Multiple platforms using multiple sensors of different types all saying there is "something" there argue against the idea that "it's just a lens artifact." That's not to say that the "something" is ET, only that there was some real, detectable, object or phenomenon and writing it off as a "lens artifact" is about a credible as saying "it was swamp gas."

      • the keyword here being "allegedly" yet only the video of a clear IR-lens artifact have ever been shown.
        • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

          the keyword here being "allegedly"

          Yes, I chose the word purposefully--I haven't seen radar data (and probably couldn't interpret it even if I had) so I will not hang my hat on it. There's also the problem with the "artifact" theory that the FLIR footage was (again, allegedly) taken by a different aircraft than the one that did the initial sighting (which did not have a FLIR camera). I

          The claimed sequence of events is that pilot one gets a radar steer from a surface ship, and actually sees something in the air. Pilot two shows up and gets f

          • The analysis of that video is way more than just dismissing it as an artifact. For one it both behaves and looks exactly like a IR artifact and there also exists actual footage of actual IR artifacts of this very type that is basically identical to what is shown in this video. And the info about radar data existing is just that, rumours.
      • Any proof of the allegedly also appeared?
  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @11:03AM (#63718364) Homepage Journal

    I think for some people, "transparent" could only be satisifed by producing the corpses of alien pilots.

    I'm beginning to think there's a conspiracy in the DoD, just not the one they want you to *think* there is.

    When I was a teenager, I had a friend who fell down the Fortean [wikipedia.org] rabbit hole. He got into Pyramid Power [wikipedia.org], the Bermuda Triangle, cryptozoology. He built a UFO detector alarm from instructions in a magazine, which assured me he knew worked because it went off all the time.

    After college we lost touch, but some years later I ran into him, and he was a changed man. The ebullience was gone; he was quiet, timid even. It turned out his exploration of esoterica led him to the local cell of a satanist cult. Not the ironic nose-tweaking atheist kind, the kind that actually worships Satan as a supernatural being and believes Aryans will establish a galactic civilization because, oh yes, they're Nazis too. He got out, but the experience messed him up. It wasn't anything supernatural, it was very ordinary human pyschopathy preying upon someone who was easy to exploit.

    This is the lesson I took from this: beware of people who are trying to inflame the gullible.

    • What an odd combination, Nazi and Satanist? Sounds like a group of kids who just wanted to be as edgy as humanly possible. Satan worshipers would have been abhorrent to real Nazis, and real Satanists would have real issues with National Socialist policy. Someone just said to themselves, what's more evil that Satan? Nazi Satan!!!
  • Not the UFOs, they are just the distraction. But what are they doing that they want this kind of distraction?

    • Not the UFOs, they are just the distraction. But what are they doing that they want this kind of distraction?

      Having seen enough US political news I think you're attributing too much sophistication to the congress folk involved.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Ah yes, I was wondering when "they" were going to show up here. Apparently, there is nothing "they" cannot do, no secret "they" cannot conceal, no end to "their" machinations. I sure hope we catch "them" sometime. You seem to be onto the case. Why don't you figure out who "they" are and get back to us? We'll wait.

      • by Holi ( 250190 )

        So you think it's more likely that aliens have travelled intergalactic distances to crash here on earth?

      • by Holi ( 250190 )

        And by "they", I mean Congress , the people making a big show. Isn't that an accepted use of the word they, to reference a group of people?

    • Possibly the Hunter Biden/Ukraine corruption business.

  • by darkstar949 ( 697933 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @11:24AM (#63718428)
    Having actually sat through the entire hearing, the questions from the law makers was actually pretty telling. Most were not focused on cover-ups and "little green men" but on more practical concerns of "Are there SAPs that are not subject to oversight?", "Is the DoD spending money on programs of little value?", and "What is the response if a pilot reports seeing seeing something odd? Is this a national security threat?"

    That last question is actually really important because drones exists, can have very unusual designs, and they get lumped in with other UFO reports [thedrive.com]. So if pilots are afraid to report things then it's entirely possible for an adversity to be gathering intelligence with impunity simply because someone is afraid to report seeing something odd. It also doesn't help that the US intelligence community is actually documented as having encouraged the "giggle factor" associated with UFOs as a way of covering up flights of the U-2 [nytimes.com] and later testing of the F-117 [google.com].
  • Aliens travel billions of miles, surviving extreme radiation in a spaceship that when arriving at Earth, crashes? Really? Their technology is so bad it allows their ships to be seen and to crash?
    • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      Maybe they have Boeing's management culture, too?

    • What if their attempts are like Earth's attempts at Mars missions? [zdnet.com] Which fail just over half the time?

      Just assume they've figured out "In their solar system" like we have flying to the next continent(well, we still crash these occasionally), but extended to 'solar systems over'.

      They can be a whole lot better at space travel than we are, but it's a much more difficult problem as well. Also, we wouldn't need a 100% failure rate, if they sent 100 missions, with a 10% failure rate, that's still 10 crashed UFO

    • There is no star within billions of miles. Alpha Proxima is about 15 TRILLION miles away.

      • Technology beyond FTL but they aren't smart enough nor powerful enough to not get abducted by humans. Not smart enough to rescue themselves either I guess.

        If they are worm-holing to get here, then where are the rest of them? Those 'tic-tacs' display no signs of intelligence beyond insect-like. They just flutter around for no apparent reason, just like bugs. That's not intelligent life, much less off-world intelligence.

        I know, they must be hiding their ships on the reserves somewhere. Genius spot, no one wou

        • It's the last of them, and they're children. They didn't build the technology themselves. They stole it from the dead; the last living adults of their dimension. Essentially, imagine if a vastly futuristic species from another dimension parallel to ours went through an extinction level event or some sort of other apocalypse, and the final survivors were 1/3rd of a classroom of school kids... just the bullies. So they steal some military tech from the abandoned base across the street and take it on a joy rid

          • Hmm that all sounds like a very human way of rationalizing using current human realities, like being nearly powerless pond scum. I suppose it's possible, just not all that believable. When you are that far advanced, the universe doesn't just sneak up on you...unless they were hit with a GRB in some insanely unlikely scenario but you combine that rarity with the rarity of life itself and....yeah, no point in debating. Proof or go away.

            • I know it's not believable but I'm not hypothesizing here. I'm telling you what happened, albeit very summarized. In the end what did them in was actually the byproducts of their success. Their massive technological progress had solved all practical problems with survival so many thousands of years ago that nobody could remember what evil was even like anymore. So they recreated it out of boredom and curiosity. It started a time war that spawned a weapon that could erase matter and even space-time itself. S

              • Sounds like you are splicing several different star trek episodes together, and you are using words to do it. No more words.

                • Star Trek really covered a lot of ground. It would be difficult to find any important real-world paradigms that can't be found echoed in one or another episode from one or another Star Trek series.

              • Oh...and apparently the universe was not old enough to accommodate all that time until very recently. So this must all be a very new revelation....lol.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      It was made in China.

    • Aliens travel billions of miles, surviving extreme radiation in a spaceship that when arriving at Earth, crashes? Really? Their technology is so bad it allows their ships to be seen and to crash?

      There was a Star Trek TNG episode on this, so yes there must be stupid aliens with advanced technology.

    • lol it's such a ridiculous notion. The best part is how absolutely NO ONE considers the following: If aliens really are here, then why does no one care where it's from?

      Surely it has a name, a race, a culture, etc, all of which comes from a planet, a system, a galaxy. Not one word about any of this. aka: buuuullshit. lol.

    • Humans who for most of their history could only communicate at the speed of a drum/semaphore-relay and/or fast horses invent a global network that allows them to send communications across the at speed such that the constraint of light speed is now a significant part of the limiting factor. Moreover, they can send volumes of data, pictures, and video that were inconceivable a mere 200 years ago.

      And what do are they using it for? To expand their minds? A few, perhaps; but the vast majority are watching re

  • A moron parade in the greatest clown show on earth!

  • “We alone cannot take credit for our technological advances,we have had help from people of other worlds”. Dr. Herman Oberth, father of rocketry and aeronautics – American Weekly 1954

    “Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe that unknown flying objects are nonsense.” Former CIA Director, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, public statement, 1960.

    And I won't even bother quoting NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell, because he's said PLENTY about his belief in UFOs and the fact people in government have captured alien craft and reverse-engineered them, etc.

    Point is? There's plenty of reason, in my mind, not to discount all of this. I'm sure 99% of the stuff we hear from people in the general public as claimed sightings is just nonsense. (Look at the crazy claim, just recently, about an alien in Las Vegas after the apparent meteor sighting. People were literally showing video on YouTube of night sky around a back yard fence line and trying to make out video artifacts and noise as the tall alien looking at them from over the fence!) That doesn't invalidate the possibility of alien life existing. It just means opportunists will make false claims for their 15 minutes of fame or to profit on a book deal.

    If you look up in the sky at any random time, you probably don't see any aircraft flying over your head. Yet if you look at a flight tracker app on your computer or phone? You'll likely find out there are several planes flying right past you. It's really hard to spot most of them. That, alone, should tell you that even if UFOs were visiting us, it's likely most would go unnoticed by us, just looking with the naked eye.

    That's why I think it's far more interesting when reports of this come from airline pilots, government officials, military, etc.These are the people who'd have the reason, the equipment, and/or be in the airspace to encounter something real. They're the ones who would respond to a crashed aircraft, or would shoot one down for flying in restricted airspace.

    • Everything you said only implies that aliens are possible. None of it indicates that aliens are already here. Until anyone can provide physical evidence (even just a material not naturally occurring or human manufactured, and purposefully shaped would be enough), then there is no point in getting excited.

      Biological, assuming that word even fits, samples would be best if an actual alien can not be produced. Until then, keep your hopes and dreams as hopes and dreams rather than delusions.

  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @05:19PM (#63719674)

    Image that we had the technology to detect intelligent life on other stars (not out of the question) and go there in person (way, way more than we can do until the AI singularity figures it out for us).

    Would we zip around in their atmosphere and chase around after their planes knowing they could detect us? If one of our super-craft happened to malfunction would there be some kind of ejection/parachute system or would the crew go down along with the ship-full of evidence? Would we hasten to pick up crash debris before it could be shuffled off to the alien Area 51 or just leave it?

    • by BigZee ( 769371 )
      You need to properly understand the circumstnaces.

      When PlanetExpress ship arrived at Roswell in 1947, it was already out of control. They couldn't avoid crashing. Now, the capture of Zoidberg was stupid as was Fry becoming his own grandfather.

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