U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps on purpose) and cause a base to scramble to intercept. The proposed theory on why they'd get caught on purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a response would be flying through the airspace.
It's possible they've been doing this for more than a decade and the military has gotten caught with egg on it's face having ignored the reports for so long.
Adversaries spend 100k for a military grade drone. What do shoot it down with? A 1M dollar Patriot? Whatever you choose will be orders of magnitude more expensive than the drone.
Israel’s Iron Dome has the same issue. It costs massively more for defense than attack.
Missiles have a finite lifespan. They use the older ones first. Firing one the day before it has to go back for refurbishment might save money. You won't have to ship it back. Fired missiles are also generally not replaced, under the assumption that a new stock of better missiles will likely be ordered in a few years anyway.
And the cost of the plane is also complex. This pilot/aircraft renewed some quals on this flight, reducing training needs. The aircraft was likely going flying that day anyway. So the net cost of the operation was likely minimal.
One of the oldest tricks in the (SIGINT) book is to trick the enemy into activating their radar and/or trigger a response to an incursion to collect all of the resulting signals intelligence.
Absolutely. This is the primary reason those “UFO’s” AKA balloons and drones are concerning: Signals intelligence (and/or radar jamming in the same vein which the DOD reported has occurred off the coast of Virginia).
It’s alarming many leaped to suggest LEO satellites obviate the need for balloons/drones/spy planes because it really isn’t true; there are some things for which a proper resolution and capture is simply only possibly with proximity, at least more than a satellite has. In fact that’s why we still use U-2 spy planes (upgraded) and did for the balloon.
Given the number of unidentified drone/balloon incursions reported by the Pentagon in the last few years near ships and air force bases I do wonder what’s been exposed about our radars and or datalinks. It also doesn’t necessarily matter that the data is encrypted (a weird refrain I saw) because the operating frequencies and behavior of the emitters on our aircraft, ships is in and of itself valuable information.
Kind of have to wonder if after the last shootdown the PLA sent out a more specialized collection platform in the hopes that the US would take the bait yet again.
I’m sure that NORAD doesn’t use their most advanced sensor platforms in such a circumstance, but there could be all kinds of interesting close range data to collect on the aircraft and weapons systems used to respond.
I wouldn't be so sure that NORAD doesn't use their "most advanced" sensor platforms. How would they be able to determine whether or not the threat was "real" before turning on their sensors? Are you suggesting that they have two tiers of sensor networks, and hold the "good" ones back for "real" threats?
It would be an air to air missile like a sidewinder which still costs $400k. Just scrambling a couple jets would cost tens of thousands on top of that I’m sure.
More than tens of thousands of dollars, military aircraft are incredibly expensive to operate and maintain. Beyond the obvious fuel costs, every hour of flight time is followed up by N hours of service.
If I remember correctly, the F-22 Raptor is the champ in terms of highest ratio of service required per hour of flight (40:1).
The F-35 clocks in at 4-8 hours of service per hour flown (6:1).
One example from the article linked below:
USMIL budgeted $39m dollars for the blue angels to fly 69 days in one year. It's up to 11 F/A-18 Hornets at once, but in my experience they only fly for a couple of minutes for a show.
Plus, who knows what kind of math games the military plays in terms of budget reporting. Operating commercial aircraft is already
very expensive, and military craft are an order of magnitude moreso.
The planes are beautiful, though <3, and remain operationally effective.
Military flying is way more complicated than man-hours per flight. For instance, ground servicing people also need to be trained. So double or triple the minimum man hours needed to accomidate those people being trained on the job. Military people also have a host of training/admin/command costs spread across the entire military complex. Then per-hour numbers dont accomidate the periodic maintenance not done at the home squadron but at a support facility elsewhere. Other costs are less a function of hours than duty cycles, paticularly engines. And aircraft like the f22 are irreplaceable, meaning their depretiation costs are more a matter of policy than simple math. Fighter squadrons are generally given a budget in dollars, but also airframe hours to accomidate fleet costs. Boiling everthing down to a per-hour budget is totally impractical.
Flight hours are flight hours, and it’s very rare to do any type of offensive air-to-air operation outside of an exercise, so I’m sure it was a great training opportunity.
Less thrilled about it as someone who happened to be on a flight transiting nearby airspace last night, and who is familiar with incidents like KAL 007.
Maybe not actually launching a missile, but 99% of the pilot job comes before the missile is launched. Going up to fight against other aircraft, doing everything up to actually launching a missile, is a daily thing at any fighter squadron. The great thing about not launching a missile is that you can practice dozens of engagements rather than the one or two oppertunities during a live fire event.
That video helps explain one property one of the UFO videos (the rotation) but doesn't explain the rest. Doesn't explain the Tic Tac videos. It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well.
While some of the videos have explanation, I would kindly encourage you to look at this with more curiosity.
He covers the "Tic-Tac" and "Go Fast" videos too, just not in that specific video. Like in this one, where he explains how the "Go Fast" video isn't actually even a fast object zipping just above the water, but rather an object flying at roughly wind-speed at about 12000 feet.
The tic tac looks exactly like any number of inflight videos of other inflight objects. The apparent speed is a function of the unusual perspectives created when two objects fly at different altitudes. Watch tactical footage from fighters on a regular basis and it won't even look odd.
> It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well.
The lens flare was caused by the camera looking at the ass end of another jet. The radar saw the other jet.
For even one of these videos to have a mundane explanation that should have been obvious to the Navy upon investigation, I think that discredits the lot. Either the Navy couldn't figure it out themselves (which seems highly improbable), or for some reason the Navy is deliberately misleading the public, or at the very least allowing some of their personnel to mislead the public and playing coy about it. I think this is what's happening.
> or for some reason the Navy is deliberately misleading the public, or at the very least allowing some of their personnel to mislead the public and playing coy about it
Maybe they think it's funny. Maybe it's to confuse their adversaries, or a ploy for more funding from Congress. Maybe they're allowing some pranksters to have their fun because they want to encourage an environment of open reporting where pilots aren't afraid to report strange things.
The Navy was directed by the Executive branch to release the videos. They released the videos and a non-statement about what the videos were.
My guess is that there's an internal report describing the FLIR system and how the FLIR system works and how the internal workings of the FLIR system caused the visual phenomena. But that's all classified.
So they did the absolute minimum the Executive branch required them to do and left it up to the White House Press Secretary to explain it to the American public.
To me it reeks of the brass not wanting to have any more of their time wasted. There's a great scene in The Wire where the metro police, the harbor police, the state police, and the county sheriff arguing that a string of murders don't fall under their jurisdiction; it's your problem you deal with it etc, subverting the trope of the local cops fighting with the federal/state police (usually the FBI) that "this is my jurisdiction" or whatever. I think this is the same. The Executive branch (I'm 80% sure it was Trump, coulda been Obama, too lazy to look it up) demanded that they do a thing they didn't want to do, and then they dragged their feet and did the bare minimum, and in the process made a mess that now the Office of the White House now needs to clean up. (which they didn't, because they don't want to explain a classified sensor system in a public briefing either)
> This preliminary report is provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in response to the provision in Senate Report 116-233, accompanying the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for Fiscal Year 2021, that the DNI, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), is to submit an intelligence assessment of the threat posed by unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the progress the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) has made in understanding this threat.
why does every debunking focus on the footage and ignore the fact the objects were also confirmed on radar? Do they just assume the Navy is filled with morons who decided to report this through the chain of command based on nothing but footage and didn't consider a lens flare?
We haven't been provided proof that anything was confirmed on radar, nor what "confirmation" means. This is the same military that has a history of using alien/UFO conspiracy theories to obfuscate sightings of classified aircraft. It's not a case of the Navy being morons, but whether or not the military is being truthful.
My assumption is that sensationalized UAPs are illusions, but the reason the military keeps putting out press releases about them is not because they're aliens. The first reason is that there are unidentified aircraft entering US airspace. They're likely cheap attempts at both intelligence collecting and psychological warfare on behalf of US adversaries. Drones are easily mass produced and a nation flying a handful of drones in US airspace can easily send hundreds/thousands/millions because of how cheap and easy they are to make and deploy.
Since drones can vary in size and be flown in a ton of different conditions/patterns/scenarios/etc, they might be hard to detect. The mainstreaming of the "UAP mystery" narrative encourages civilians to look for, record and massively platform adversarial drones should they be seen by people, but go undetected by systems that are looking for them. The narrative also neuters whatever attempt at intimidation or psyops adversaries are waging against the public/military/etc. "Our militaries can send whatever we want into your airspace and there's nothing you can do about it" can be a powerful message that was effectively neutered with "maybe they're aliens lol".
The Navy has a patent on creating fake UFOs that appear on radar and other sensors so that seems like a perfectly logical explanation. It would also explain why the Navy disproportionately sees the UFOs when compared to the Air Force.
Isn’t it better to let people underestimate us? Especially any potential adversary.
Regardless, liminal warfare will continue to give rise to this kind of scenario so we should try not to outsmart ourselves in a desperate bid to be right
> Isn’t it better to let people underestimate us? Especially any potential adversary.
Depends on the domain. Underestimation could lead to perceptions of weakness and opportunity for attack. Even if you are prepared for attack, not getting attacked in the first place is better than getting attacked at all.
Mick West's videos are so good, specifically because the analysis are based on what's actually shown in the interface in the videos. There's no big "like, comment, subscribe"-section either. Just a pure explanation of why the object shown isn't as mystical as it appears at first glance.
I agree the videos are thoroughly debunked as being aliens, but there still are credible reports that navy/air force see craft observing them periodically. That doesn't have to be aliens for the reports to be true.
e.g. The video that got debunked as Bokeh (accurately) is still someone on that ship attempting to video a craft that they see nearby them. It's only viewers of the video who get confused and believe that the bokeh effect is what they are supposed to be seeing in the video.
> Mick Wests videos on the topic have been thoroughly debunked by fighter pilots and experienced aviators.
I have never seen a counter-analysis. Can you explain why you think this? It's not common knowledge that the observations of Mick West has been "debunked"...at least not as commonly known or easy to find as the Mick West analysis or the source videos.
Regardless I think the simplest counter argument is that if that were really the case, you'd see these damn things on every flight facing the sun and people would know to ignore them. Lens flares also don't show up on radar and on pilot's eyes. No crazy analysis needed.
That's unnecessarily pejorative. Presenting something as evidence, requires some amount of rigor. This is why an in-depth analysis is valued. Presenting as strong a case as possible for either side, is the method by which we can best decide on what is known.
> Regardless I think the simplest counter argument is that if that were really the case, you'd see these damn things on every flight facing the sun and people would know to ignore them
I don't believe that's a counter-argument, as it applies to both conclusions. A unique coincidence does not imply it's common. ie If the gimbal video was a UFO, you'd see these damn things on every flight, etc.
> Lens flares also don't show up on radar and on pilot's eyes.
Mick West's analysis video does not contend that the object is only a lens flare, but an object with a lens flare (or lens artifact) overlaying it. There is no dispute that the pilots saw a group of objects with targeting information on a singular physical object from the video source.
Funny, though tbh it seems like there are cheaper ways to cause the US to spend gobs of cash. I even hesitate to mention some ideas that immediately come to mind that would be easier/more efficient to really nail than the Pringles can idea.
Plus many of the more prominent base-personnel sightings land quite a bit far from that particular ballpark. Take a look into the Rendlesham Forest incident for example.
The problem with "summing up UFO contact" is that the variety of encounters is absolutely insane. Compare Rendlesham to Varginha, etc.
It really starts to bring out the "inter" in the more colorful inter-dimensional contact theories.
Funny, though tbh it seems like there are cheaper ways
to cause the US to spend gobs of cash.
Yeah.
My best understanding based on watching a lot of retired military personnel is that isolated incidents cost the US almost exactly zero additional dollars.
The way an Air Force base works is this: there is a budget. This covers the (considerable) costs of the base itself, the personnel, the equipment, and so on.
Active-duty fighter pilots must fly a certain number of hours per month to remain on active status. Just like any other demanding activity (sports, competitive gaming, whatever) their skills require constant maintenance. These flying hours are of course budgeted. (This will be true of literally any air force; it's not specifically a USAF thing)
Things like these incident responses, and even things like flyovers before sporting events, come out of those predetermined budgeted flying hours that they were going to fly anyway. So isolated incidents like these don't really increase USAF expenses in a meaningful way. Those $400K/ea missiles will presumably need to be replenished but this must be compared to the USAF's total budget of $180 billion.
To put any strain whatsoever on the US's capabilities our foes would need to start sending large amounts of drones: essentially, a saturation attack. More than we can comfortably respond to. Which is of course... extremely possible.
But as long as these remain isolated incidents we can surmise that our adversary's goal is not "cost the US a bunch of money."
A potential flaw in this plan: while everything you say may be true, it is not broadly known. If China (or whoever) was to keep floating these things our way and we kept shooting them down at a don't worry about it, we're pot committed rate of ~$400k per incident, maybe people's blind faith in the military and politicians might be replaced with some rare curiosity, and maybe even displeasure! (Though: it's not like they have an alternative to vote for, but that too is not immutable, it only seems that way.)
Keeping people immersed in a complex narrative is a lot easier than one would think, but it is also a very tricky balancing act that can get upset by the weirdest things.
Personally, I'm all for it - anything that has the potential to wake up the American/Western public from their dream state is a good thing in my books, plus it makes for good entertainment.
while everything you say may be true, it is not broadly known
It's readily available public information. As far as "widely known," I guess that's true. Most people haven't really nerded out on the details of how pilots maintain combat readiness and how budgets work, but uh, your point?
anything that has the potential to wake up the American/Western
public from their dream state is a good thing in my books
I'm not exactly the biggest fan of any government, but what specifically are you talking about here?
What is the "dream state" that these incursions might shatter?
> It's readily available public information. As far as "widely known," I guess that's true.
It's even worse: even when people do ingest available information, they very often do it erroneously, forming a misunderstanding (without realizing it).
> Most people haven't really nerded out on the details of how pilots maintain combat readiness and how budgets work, but uh, your point?
Broadly: humanity runs mostly on untrue stories, and does not realize it (actually, there's a "it's even worse' here too).
>> anything that has the potential to wake up the American/Western public from their dream state is a good thing in my books
> I'm not exactly the biggest fan of any government, but what specifically are you talking about here?
Simplistically: people's understanding and trust in their government (abstract and concrete), and what is going on in general is highly erroneous, and not only do they not realize this, they believe the opposite. I consider this to be an extremely dangerous state of affairs, despite it having always been the case and "we're doing ok" nonetheless. Things often go "ok" for a very long time, and then suddenly start going "not ok", often without an obvious trigger.
> What is the "dream state" that these incursions might shatter?
The phenomena resulting from the combination of consciousness + culture + time, both individually and collectively.
You might be best served by filing this under "woo woo" though...but then again, you also might not - there's only one way to (possibly) find out!
> it seems like there are cheaper ways to cause the US to spend gobs of cash.
Yeah, the Mig-25 / F-15 thing comes to mind. Soviets develop a super secret jet, very big, very fast.. it must be very impressive fighter jet! America is spooked so tons of resources are poured into the F-15 to make the absolute best possible air superiority fighter jet they can, to counter this new Soviet threat.
Except then it turns out that the Mig-25 was never a fighter jet, it was an interceptor that was very fast in a straight line but not much more. So the US built an incredible air superiority fighter to counter a phantom of a jet that never really existed in the way America thought.
If you know something about how the USAF responds to incidents, the idea of the deputy base commander and disaster preparedness running around in the middle of the night chasing UFO's is hilarious. It's obviously a practical joke that got out of hand.
Just watched some interviews. The guys claiming to have “downloaded” an alien signal by touching the craft.
The signal was transmitted in binary and just happened to be ASCII encoded English. Odd that a ship from 8100 transmitted data in an archaic dialect of an ancient language using an ancient encoding that just happened to match the language and encoding in widespread use during this guys lifetime.
Yeah, a $50k missile to save even a single unoccupied house is a missile that paid for itself. And if it saves a few human lives then it was positively cheap.
If bankrupting Israel by forcing them to expend Iron Dome interceptors is Hezbollah's plan, it obviously isn't working.
I wonder how much is going into location technology much like ShotSpotter but for rockets and mortar and all that sort of thing. They may already know the origins of fire but maybe can't fire back at that precise location or something?
Counter-battery radar that can track artillery shells or ballistic rockets back to their point of origin have been around for many years now; the Israelis surely know exactly where the rockets are being fired from. I think they (usually) avoid firing back because they know there would be civilian casualties and want to avoid some of that bad PR.
True. But they're unguided, almost none of them will cause real damage, but you have no choice but to take all of them out to prevent the losses from a lucky shot - at great expense. It's a great way to drain your enemies funds, great asymmetric warfare. Casualties are just icing on the cake.
Part of Iron Dome is trajectory analysis. If the profile of a target matches that of an unguided rocket and the CEP is in some unoccupied area, no interceptors are fired. If it looks like it'll land in a populated area, interceptors are fired. It doesn't just shoot everything in the sky.
That analog for a $50 Estes rocket can blow a family apart into little pieces. The discipline is sound - protect your citizens from external threats, no matter the cost. That's the purpose of government and by extension, its military.
This is a cat and mouse game that we've been playing for decades. USA has surveillance aircraft in the air at all times, especially near ADIZ. It also has at least one of two national command and control aircraft in the air at all times. The USA has been probed more times than can be counted, and we've probed other countries just as much. What's new is ignoring a threat while over territorial waters or sparsely populated areas and letting it glide across the country before deciding to shoot it down.
I don’t think that’s new based on the most recent incident. I recall the pentagon saying this has been going on for a few years. But if, by saying new you mean the last decade, that’s fair.
I was referring to the general surveillance of opposing forces by governments. Even still, balloons have been used for surveillance and attack for over one hundred years.
During the siege of Yorktown in 1862, Union General Fitz Porter decided to do some surveillance using only one rope on an observation balloon. The rope snapped and he drifted over enemy lines. Confederates tried to shoot him down but missed. Eventually the wind sent him back over Union lines.
Balloons were used in WW1 as observation posts (ushering in wide-spread use of parachutes) and in WW2 for both observation and area over-flight denial.
By May 1945, Japan sent almost 10,000 armed balloons across the pacific. They were largely ineffective, however, they did kill a pregnant mother and five children who discovered a downed balloon in Bly, Oregon. 285 Japanese balloons were recovered, one as far east as Texas.
The proposed theory on why they'd get caught on
purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a
response would be flying through the airspace.
It's certainly the most likely explanation.
Accordingly, it seems highly possible that the countries targeted by such incursions (a) realize their response time is being tested (b) fuzz/delay their responses by some certain amount of time in order to frustrate such efforts.
Making a high altitude balloon highly visible (eg, put lights inside it) and sitting back and waiting is actually a terrific tactic for finding out maximum operational ceiling of interceptors when the number is non-public.
Mission accomplished. The previously published ceiling of the F-22 was 50K feet. The Pentagon said it (edit: by "it" I mean the F-22) was flying at 58K feet when it shot down the first balloon. Guess it can do (at least) 58K.
This was probably not entirely groundbreaking news to anybody including China. Everybody knows that the published specs of military hardware are intentionally distorted in one direction or another.
The F-15's known ceiling is 65K feet for example. So it's not surprising that newer fighters can match that.
There's not really any reason the Pentagon needed to state the F-22 was at 58k if that was actually new information (I haven't investigated the previously admitted service ceiling). They could have just as easily have claimed it was at 50k when it fired.
EDIT: Wikipedia claims the service ceiling of the F-22 is 65k feet anyways.
That was actually similar to a concern from CIA director Walter Bedell Smith:
>According to Smith, it was CIA’s responsibility by statute to coordinate the intelligence effort required to solve the problem. Smith also wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts.
Given the possibilities of an alien spacecraft observed on Earth violating the known laws of physics, or some error on the part of the observer, I'm going with the latter every time.
First, prove that everything we know about physics is wrong at a fundamental, irreconcilable level. Then explain why our completely wrong models of physics still work as well as they do. Then explain the Fermi Paradox in light of the apparent existence of easy faster than light/antigravity technology and confirmation of the existence of other technologically advanced civilizations in the universe. Then I'll be willing to concede the still practically nil chance of any of those aliens actually being here given the vast size of the observable universe as being likely enough to consider.
Don't get me wrong, I want it to be true. I desperately want it to be true. I've been fascinated by UFOlogy and sightings and the related folklore for decades. I want some fate for humanity other than us slowly choking to death on our own poison, alone on this island in the midst of vast seas of infinity. It's just that the bar for proving any other possibility is higher than a third-hand account of someone seeing a light in the sky that moved really fast.
> Given the possibilities of an alien spacecraft observed on Earth violating the known laws of physics, or some error on the part of the observer, I'm going with the latter every time.
You know, it isn't (physically) necessary to choose anything.
> First, prove that everything we know about physics is wrong at a fundamental, irreconcilable level.
Why does everything have to be wrong, in an irreconcilable manner?
> Don't get me wrong, I want it to be true.
I dunno man, the opposite seems to be the case - are you not at least suffering from motivated reasoning, to some degree?
> I want some fate for humanity other than us slowly choking to death on our own poison, alone on this island in the midst of vast seas of infinity.
Me too!! Consider this idea: our cultural tendency to form beliefs absent of proof (therefore: faith based, which is usually considered a big no no) causes substantial harm, and our tendency to write it off as "that's just people" or (begrudgingly) as "well, of course I'm only expressing my opinion, that's what everyone is always doing" are not proper common sense and reasonableness, but rather are emergent behaviors that cause humanity to be permanently stuck in a local maxima (on certain dimensions, while ongoing successes in specific domains like science, engineering, computing, etc make it appear like we have our shit substantially together comprehensively).
Of course, this is speculation - but what if it is actually true to a non-trivial degree?
>You know, it isn't (physically) necessary to choose anything.
Sure, but we're here on a discussion forum so not committing to any point of view seems counterproductive.
>Why does everything have to be wrong, in an irreconcilable manner?
Because the laws of physics as we understand them, even quantum mechanics, don't allow for things like antigravity or faster than light travel or propagation of information. Theoretical warp-drive models like the Alcubierre drive, or wormholes, or other solutions either require different spacetimes or exotic matter or negative energy or some kind of fudge factor that makes it not work within our universe. Special relativity says it's impossible. Quantum mechanics says it's impossible.
If it turns out that FTL travel is possible, it means we live in a universe without causality, where the relationship between cause and effect is arbitrary. If it turns out to be not only possible but also trivial, to the point that you can fit a warp drive onto something the size of a plane, Then E=MC^2 turns out to be meaningless. Since everything we observe about the universe, at every scale, suggests causality exists and that E=MC^2 holds, we can't be wrong about those without being wrong about everything.
But hey, maybe we are. Great. Show me some equations then. That's all I'm asking. Prove it's wrong, first. Show me a working anti-gravity drive or a warp drive, built by humans, or something that can be tested independently, peer reviewed and verified. Faster than light teleportation. Something.
But all I'm expected to hang my hat on is rumors, folklore and videos for which mundane explanations exist.
>I dunno man, the opposite seems to be the case - are you not at least suffering from motivated reasoning, to some degree?
Everyone suffers from motivated reasoning, that's how reason works. I'm just saying my personal bar for proof is higher than those willing to accept that we simply don't understand anything about physics as a prior to making the UFO argument semantically trivial.
Rather than believe that we're exactly as ignorant now - even though we can measure gravitational waves and the cosmic microwave background and use quantum tunneling in our microchips and GPS has to take relativistic time dilation into account - as we were thousands of years ago when we believed the stars were inscribed on crystal spheres, I believe our models of the universe have become more accurate over time, and that as a result, fundamental paradigm shifts become less and less likely.
That doesn't mean I don't want to believe, it just means I don't also believe in magical thinking. And I'm far from the only skeptic who wants to believe out there. Eyewitness testimony is interesting, video is interesting, but it isn't enough. At least not for me.
> Sure, but we're here on a discussion forum so not committing to any point of view seems counterproductive.
But if you think of it from the perspective of what is actually true, what do you come up with?
Also: assuming you're a programmer/techie type: is this the same epistemic methodology you use when writing code?
Given the possibilities of an alien spacecraft observed on Earth violating the known laws of physics, or some error on the part of the observer, I'm going with the latter every time.
>>> First, prove that everything we know about physics is wrong at a fundamental, irreconcilable level.
>> Why does everything[!] have to be wrong, in an irreconcilable manner?
> Because the laws of physics as we understand them, even quantum mechanics, don't allow for things like antigravity or faster than light travel or propagation of information. Theoretical warp-drive models like the Alcubierre drive, or wormholes, or other solutions either require different spacetimes or exotic matter or negative energy or some kind of fudge factor that makes it not work within our universe. Special relativity says it's impossible.
Here you are only describing that some things that we believe would have to be incorrect, and you do not even attempt to substantiate the "irreconcilable" part, as far as I can tell.
> Quantum mechanics says it's impossible.
Saying something is true does not necessarily mean it is true, but it certainly often causes it to appear true.
> If it turns out that FTL travel is possible, it means we live in a universe without causality, where the relationship between cause and effect is arbitrary.
Why?
> If it turns out to be not only possible but also trivial, to the point that you can fit a warp drive onto something the size of a plane, Then E=MC^2 turns out to be meaningless. Since everything we observe about the universe, at every scale, suggests causality exists and that E=MC^2 holds, we can't be wrong about those without being wrong about everything.
Why (in general, and also specifically related to everything having to be wrong)?
> But hey, maybe we are. Great. Show me some equations then.
The burden of proof lies with the person making an assertion.
> Prove it's wrong, first. Show me a working anti-gravity drive or a warp drive, built by humans, or something that can be tested independently, peer reviewed and verified. Faster than light teleportation. Something.
First: prove to me, and yourself, that you are correct.
> But all I'm expected to hang my hat on is rumors, folklore and videos for which mundane explanations exist.
Who is it that is expecting you to do that here, and how did you acquire that knowledge?
> Everyone suffers from motivated reasoning...
Do all people suffer from it, always? And where people do suffer from it, do they suffer from it equally?
Also: where have you acquired this comprehensive knowledge?
> that's how reason works.
Not really.
> I'm just saying my personal bar for proof is higher than those willing to accept that we simply don't understand anything about physics as a prior to making the UFO argument semantically trivial.
To me, your personal bar for proof seems essentially/abstractly identical to most people's: if it seems true, it is true.
Also: how sure are you of "those willing to accept that we simply don't understand anything about physics"? (Emphasis mine.)
> Rather than believe that we're exactly as ignorant now - even though we can measure gravitational waves and the cosmic microwave background and use quantum tunneling in our microchips and GPS has to take relativistic time dilation into account - as we were thousands of years ago when we believed the stars were inscribed on crystal spheres, I believe our models of the universe have become more accurate over time, and that as a result, fundamental paradigm shifts become less and less likely.
How about a third option: the second option from your false dichotomy, combined with believing that despite our substantial accomplishments, we remain substantially ignorant. I mean, is this not fairly obvious if one just looks around at the world? Do you think that what we have going on is all that we could have accomplished, had we been paying closer attention and trying harder?
> That doesn't mean I don't want to believe, it just means I don't also believe in magical thinking.
Do you believe that not believing in magical thinking makes one invulnerable to it?
> And I'm far from the only skeptic who wants to believe out there. Eyewitness testimony is interesting, video is interesting, but it isn't enough. At least not for me.
Tautologically, what is enough for you (and everyone else) is what's enough. A way to think about it: are our individual and collective epistemic & logical standards adequate? I am extremely concerned that they are not, and for evidence I would open with climate change (as the first card I'd play, from a infinite deck).
To be fair though, I am kinda picking on you. You are surely a very nice and well-intentioned person, a product of the environment you were raised in. Though, conflating causality with justification is also a risky maneuver, especially when practiced at massive scale....but then, now I'm kinda doing it again lol. Also, I'm partially joking.
The general premise is this:
U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps on purpose) and cause a base to scramble to intercept. The proposed theory on why they'd get caught on purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a response would be flying through the airspace.
It's possible they've been doing this for more than a decade and the military has gotten caught with egg on it's face having ignored the reports for so long.