DaviiB

Yes, I know, but not my point. You said he was doing this at personnel risk. I was just pointing out that it has has been confirmed he's the first whistleblower to do this by the book. And when I said careful not reveling anything classified, I obviously meant "in public". He is not taking a personnel risk, by raveling classified stuff to Congress, where he's allowed to. He's not claiming to have witnessed any of this stuff himself, he's saying "people told me this". That's all. So not much risk. And of course, nobody here has definitively stated they think he is lying, the question is whether he himself is being misled. OK, then that brings us back to him being lied to in some sort of coordinated, targeted disinformation campaign which hoped he'd quit his career and go public? As of yesterday, I think at least one congressman has stated that other high-ranking individuals have come forward with either evidence and/or first-hand corroborating testimony, which is also being investigated. This whole thing seems to causing quite a stir (not in the media, but in Congress). My point was that the actual advancement in material science etc. in the last 100 years (since the first powered flight) has been immense. So, if a certain type of effect was discovered, Engineers could quickly find a way to make use of it, and develop technologies around it......and it wouldn't take long (relatively) to go from basic concepts to advanced designs that make the originals look like toys. Back to my original point....if a civilization were to discover an effect that enabled (relatively easy) gravity manipulation (or exclusion) at the same time we figured out basic aerodynamics....what would their equivalent of an F35, or Boeing 787 look like in 100 years, all other things being equal? To give this hypothetical a chance at survival: I also think it's important to appreciate the effects of being locked / established within a particular paradigm. For example, when we (and Science in general) were convinced that "The earth is the center of the solar system and everything revolves around it" (<<That's a paradigm), the math required to explain the observed movements of the Sun and planets in the sky was extremely complex (and I'm sure there were a few things that didn't fit). Either way, it was accepted as the "way things are", and the math basically worked. It took some time for the truth to be understood and accepted (Sun at the center etc.), but once it was, the math became much simpler. Same observed effects, but the "science" became much easier once we stopped looking at everything the completely wrong way. We have theories in Physics, some of which are very complex, to explain observed effects from the macro, down to the quantum level. All (or almost all) of them have exceptions and things that don't fit. Sound familiar? Science has advanced, but human nature hasn't really changed. We accept certain things as just "the way things are" when objectively, we're just locked into a particular paradigm. That paradigm could be correct, or it could be completely backwards. If it happened once, it could happen again.

That's why I said to ignore the subject matter. Science moves forward in fits and starts sometimes, and until a new major discovery is made (and accepted), most scientists and their assessments of what's probable or possible, will be wrong (sometimes hilariously so). We've come pretty far in the last 500 years, but it's a bit much to assume we really "know" anything, when new discoveries often make it clear how little we "knew" before. It was implied that several people have provided Grusch with information and evidence, soooo, more than two. Apparently some of them he's known for much of his career. Again, if this is a psy-op, what could be the purpose, and why do it this way? Also, so far, several people have come out to vouch for him, and some members of Congress are indicating that his credentials and elements of his story check out. He has given 11 hours of classified testimony, under oath, to Congress. The IGIC and Congress appear to be going through the process of vetting the information he's provided. Incoming legislation also appears to include provisions designed to flush out the alleged compartmented programs (and contractors) holding recovered materials. If he is found to be lying, I don't see it ending well for him. Yes. Possible. I'm suggesting maybe it got started later, but evolved quicker. That's one hypothesis. If there could be one, there could be many, but that's a whole other topic of conversation. In 1903 we figured out basic aerodynamics and flew a couple hundred feet at a time. 120 years later we are routinely completing 15-hour intercontinental trips with machines that seem impossibly complex by comparison (and they still crash occasionally). Imagine if we had discovered some sort of anti-gravity (I dunno.... Electro-gravidic?) effect in the early 1900s when Tesla was still around, where would we be today? I'd wager we'd seem like an impossibly advanced civilization (until we opened our mouths).

Very different objects / phenomena. And no, we don't keep a good eye on meteors / asteroids. Run a google search for the actual percentage of "the sky" that is monitored. I believe the number is quite low. You'd have to know exactly what they were to answer that question. Also, as mentioned before, sometimes they are picked up, sometimes not. I'm also not convinced you'd always hear about it if they were.

I think you're giving a bit too much credit to civilian and military abilities to "watch the skies". We (collectively) are not spending very much money, or effort to find life on other planets. Even in 2023, NORAD admitted that their radar coverage over the continental US was filtered to exclude targets that didn't fit particular profiles. i.e. They're looking for conventional aircraft and missiles. Other (potentially anomalous) objects are / were filtered out. If that is the case today, I imagine a similar, but even less capable / sophisticated system existed in 1980. Civilian radars are even less capable, and increasingly rely on transponder / ADSB data, rather than primary radar returns. Even then, there are enough reports of objects appearing and disappearing off radar, with corroborative visual sightings to infer some sort of ability like you describe. Without someone to explain how it works, we're left with observations, of which there are quite a few from experienced, qualified observers. You're asking for an explanation of how it's possible. All you'll get is "I have no idea, but that's what happened". DB

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. How would they know what? Whether or not it was a threat?

As a sidenote. At the time, I believe the knowledge that the US Military had stationed nuclear weapons at that base (on UK soil) was either secret, or highly controversial (or both), and was not publicly known until well after the incident. (<< worth a fact-check) That would have made it a bit complicated for the UK MOD to explain why the incident was considered a threat, if they publicly declared it to be one. DB

Ignoring the subject matter for a moment....What does Occam's Razor output when higher and higher credentialed witnesses keep coming forward with the same information? So in the case that Grusch is being misled, a series of "insiders" all coordinating to feed him disinformation over the course of a few years, and hoping he eventually tries do his job (and report the information), then subsequently leave his career behind and become a whistleblower. In the case that he's just lying, he is doing so at great personal risk, given the (very) official measures he has gone to to get his story out. Both require a bit of elbow grease to make work (for the psy-op angle) no? There are a number of possibilities here. Among them: - Our evolution was not a straight-line process and was impeded somehow one or may times by a filter, or six. - The accepted theories might be wrong about when life started developing on this planet, or what kicked it off. - The "actual" conditions for life to start evolving are different to what is commonly thought - Same with the speed of development. That's all, though if you take it to it's logical conclusion... Any or all of these could leave lots of time for one, or multiple "advanced" civilizations to develop and disappear on this planet before "us" and be gone for long enough that any evidence of their existence is now dust. The key words are in bold. Difficult to discover means discovered later than easy to discover. If there is some kind of principle that enables FTL, anti-gravity or interdimensional travel, it will be difficult to discover because it relies on an understanding of the easy stuff first, precisely why, with the level of scientific advancement we currently have, and the scientific method being around for a very long time... I think the key words were that the paradigm does not allow for it. If you are looking at something from a wrong paradigm, the truth could be staring you in the face, and you wouldn't see it. That's what makes it difficult to discover...the fact that you'd be looking at it the wrong way / backwards / sideways etc. That's a problem for Engineering to sort out (the process of making something useful out of an effect discovered by Physics). They have a pretty good track record over the last 100 years. Remember, we're talking about galactic time scales. 100 years, or even 500 years is hardly the blink of an eye, even compared to the known history of human civilization...and we went from sailing ships to space stations how quickly? Cheers, DB

Let's be very clear about what's happening here. Grusch's allegations have been reported through the appropriate channels to the IGIC and Congress. The task of investigating the allegations, proving them true or false, falls on the legislative branch of the US Government (<<that's not us). Defending his claims will be for him and his lawyer to do in front of Congress. From the looks of it, that process seems to be underway and picking up momentum, so with any luck, we will eventually find out one way or another. What you and I are doing is very different. We are speculating, using hypotheticals and a bit of logic, about what may or may not be possible, and what might make sense. For example: If Grusch's allegations are true (e.g. bodies recovered), how or why might that be the case? ...I am making a hypothetical case for it, and you're reasoning out a case against it. Along the way, I've invoked a series of theoretical technologies and scenarios like biological robots (engineered organisms) and fundamental laws of the universe which have escaped humanity's discovery thus far. You've invoked nano bots, the ability to scan objects from any distance, and Brian Cox (<<He's not theoretical). We both left "reality", plausibility and probability behind a long time ago. From where we both stand, biological robots and nanites are equally likely (or unlikely). So let's let Grusch defend his own claims with Congress, and we can stick to debating hypotheticals (which is much more fun that dealing with the real paperwork on this). I enjoy playing with hypotheticals, and I find the "crowded universe" side of the argument much more interesting, so here we are.

Too much to unpack here about sentience (and assumptions about it). Suffice to say, we can already "grow" meat in a lab, and I'm not doubting that will get much more sophisticated in time, but there is a huge assumption in thinking that something you "build" will become sentient (<<we don't understand enough about it). I stop at biological / robot hybrid. We are discussing David Grusch, and his claims, not the UFO community at-large. Grusch is not a member of the UFO community, and represents the highest credentialed whistleblower on this matter to come forward in recent history. So far, everything about him checks out, except his story, which the general public (and most of the government) is unable to verify....so let's wait for someone with the right clearances to call his bluff....which, as I understand, is already underway. Here's a thought that's worth pursuing: If this is a psy-op.....let's poke at that theory.....Would it not have to be an extremely well coordinated, multi-organizational operation, spanning decades and multiple administrations? How difficult would that be to pull off? <<Actual question. Also, still illegal if it's a psy-op no? There is a lot we don't know about our own history, and the history of this planet. I wouldn't be so convinced of those timelines. Especially, the time taken for advanced life to evolve on this planet. I'll leave that there because it's an even bigger can of worms. Either way, we're using a sample size of one and extrapolating. It's the best we can do with "actual" data, but still an extremely flawed way of making estimates. That's a huge assumption. Also, rapid scientific advancement and discovery has really only been happening for about 500 years. 3000 years has seen many civilizations / empires rise and fall. Not a very conducive environment for scientific advancement. When you're deep down the rabbit hole of a particular way of viewing things, it may be very, very hard to accept that one of the basic premises might be inaccurate. Also, more toward your point, a fundamental law, or effect that enables "advanced" capability might be difficult to discover from a paradigm that doesn't allow for it, but that doesn't necessarily mean the law (or effect) isn't a simple one to understand, or use once you understand it. Cheers, DB

Looks like Avsim lost my last post, so let's try this again: Our probes / rovers on Mars have tools, arms etc. for collecting samples and interacting with the environment. Fast-forward a couple thousand years...the logical endpoint for this would be something that could mimic a person's ability, dexterity etc. to perform tasks remotely. My point is, a biological robot could serve a similar function. The idea of "sentience" is a big can of worms (perhaps worth discussing separately) and, IMO, not necessarily implied when talking about the creation of a "biological" robot. I'm not so sure that's implied by their (apparent) capabilities. Two points here: First, looking back at human technological progress, we tend to leave a lot of "debris" in the field as we develop new technologies, and even more after mass deployment on the way toward high-reliability. We've never achieved perfection though, and accidents and malfunctions can still happen under the right circumstances (to think otherwise would just be hubris). Secondly, if the number of "advanced" technological (space-faring?) civilizations out there is > 1, then the actual number should be very high no matter which way you spin it. (Trillions of planets in our galaxy alone, etc. etc.). So if you plug-in a few variables: - Number of space faring civilizations - Age of planet Earth - Exactly how dangerous is space travel / exploration? (compared to in-atmosphere and low orbit operations) - Reason for visiting this planet (or a reason for increased interest....think nukes...) + frequency of visits - Range of technological achievement across spacefaring civilizations (from basic to almost Godlike?) - Non-zero risk of malfunction / accident (lower toward the higher end of the range above) That leaves room for some crashes over time. Of course there are enough unknowns that this is pure speculation. I think the whistleblower said that the retrieval and reverse engineering efforts were ongoing....maybe he meant more of the latter. I agree that a high frequency of crashes seems a bit suspect (without invoking the idea that "we're shooting them down somehow")....so I guess we'll just have to see. If you observe (and confirm) something that is violating what you think are KNOWN laws, you need to take a long hard look at your laws, because you've missed something (likely even more fundamental). To think that a civilization MUST follow the same developmental path as we did (difficult, mountain to climb etc) is not realistic. It's very possible that we've missed something fundamental and are just doing many things "the hard way". There are holes, dead-ends, and exceptions in popular scientific theories that still underlie some of the technologies we use. We consider ourselves to be fairly advanced, but basically, Engineers have just done a fantastic job of creating useful tools based on effects we don't fully understand. i.e., you don't need to "know" what fire is to be able to use it to cook. As another example, we still don't fully understand the true nature of light. Doesn't stop us from using fiber optics in our systems, because we can observe effects and make use of them. As for hard-to cheat fundamental laws. Take the example of sailing ships. 500 years ago, the task of crossing the ocean quickly would seem almost insurmountable, because of the friction of water, limited winds etc. One might have guessed that people of the future would find ways to make super efficient use of the wind, or develop extremely powerful propulsion to push big, heavy ships faster through the water. No. Instead, we used a completely different medium (air), with a completely different operating principle, to cover the same distances in hours vs months. We didn't try to "cheat" the viscosity of water. I understand this is an imperfect analogy (materials and tech required to build an aircraft vs a boat), but my point is that the idea of flying through the air vs pushing through water is a simple one, and the basic math required is not much more difficult. Mostly, the extra effort comes from the fact that the stakes are much higher if your engine quits in an aircraft. The same could possibly apply for interstellar (or interdimensional?) travel, meaning the leap would not be so significant.

My point was that the "bodies" could be AI-controlled, biological robots placed on board to perform a function. More useful than just an "unmanned" drone, but still very much expendable. You're running the risk of assigning godlike capabilities to a hypothetical species we know nothing about. Our run-of-the-mill military hardware would seem impossibly advanced, and virtually infallible, to "technologically advanced" humans from just 500 years ago, but it still fails sometimes, and crashes do happen. To be clear, I'm inclined to agree with you that a civilization with extremely-advanced technology shouldn't have craft "falling out of the sky", but we can't presume to understand the operating parameters, limitations and capacities of these vehicles. Safe to assume that everything physical will have some kind of limits and / or be designed for certain environments. We don't know what those limits would be because we don't understand the methodology of construction, propulsion, or intended operating parameters. Perhaps (per my last post) we're assigning too much credibility to the technical capabilities of these craft, beings (or whatever). What if the technology involved isn't so much more "advanced" but just "different"? Has anyone given any thought to the possibility that the universal benchmark for measuring the "level of advancement" of a civilization might not be technological capability, but something else entirely? After all, we (humans) were "smart" enough to build the atomic bomb, but not "advanced" enough to know we should never use it. DB

When I say shenanigans, I mean it appears to me that the whole Balloon / UAP shoot-down thing was completely overblown. I don't think they actually brought down a UAP with an F22 / F16. That idea seems a bit unrealistic (at best).

I think the implications of an AGI are much broader than that, and leaves a lot of possibilities open. Imagine a centralized AGI, controlling multiple "robots". If it's actually sentient (a massive can of worms), would it be concerned about losing one of its "probes"? On the contrary, if you're not restrained by inertia, then you don't really need much structural reinforcement. If a craft is immune to G forces (i.e. inertia....which seems to be implied by instantaneous acceleration), you can make it out of balsa wood and it'll do the job just fine. In aviation, we reinforce wing spars because of the G-Loading the wings endure and landing gear is reinforced because of impact forces.....all of which is moot if you're able to manipulate gravity, mass and/or inertia. See above. I think there's another big underlying assumption here that nobody's pointed out (and I haven't really touched). What if the technologies that enable the "physics defying" maneuvers we're discussing are actually fairly basic / universal? What if we (modern science) have missed, or completely misunderstood something fundamental in the Physics of the universe, and due to the momentum of "technological advancement", we've wound up doing things "the hard way" (Read: inefficient or unnecessarily difficult). We hear descriptions of craft doing Physics-defying maneuvers and immediately assume the tech and science involved must be incredibly advanced, because we consider ourselves to be technologically sophisticated. What if, for the last 50-100 years we have been perfecting the wrong tools for the job? Like trying to sharpen a spoon when we could just use a fork. It's not outside the realm of possibility that as a civilization develops, scientific advancement could "break the wrong way" for a while, and end up pursuing a potential dead-end. (See: String Theory). During that time, the "leap" required to get back on track could seem insurmountable, when in reality all that's needed is to correct a fundamental "law" that we got wrong. I actually really appreciate the discussion! Cheers

Correct, so I guess the implication is that maybe whoever was sending "spy" balloons stopped sending them after the first was discovered, and the final 3 were just leftovers? Seems a bit of a stretch. So no more balloons were discovered after that? No more runaway commercial or weather balloons? ....or did the news cycle just move on and the rest weren't reported? Either way....shenanigans.

Technically, he said the Vatican alerted the US Government of its existence. I believe he said "quite a number" when asked how many were in the possession of "the program". Recent reporting from Michael Shellenberger has claimed that his sources have indicated that the number is "at least twelve". Lazar also claimed that at least one of the vehicles being worked on was recovered in an archeological dig.....so we may be talking about a fairly long timeframe. Why there would be "pilots" on board is not something we can speculate on. But if you must, one could easily hypothesize that if you were orders of magnitude more advanced than us, you'd send a "biological" robot that could do way more than a drone....collect, observe and interact etc. Look at the potential uses for the robots coming out of Boston Dynamics. Think about what they might look like in a thousand years. As for why they crash. I think it might be a bit of a fallacy to assume "they" travelled any meaningful distance in relatively small (as popularly described) craft. If you were visiting a newly discovered island, you wouldn't dock / beach / land your oceangoing vessel on the shore. You'd keep it moored out of sight send a small (and likely much less durable) landing craft. <<This somewhat excludes the interdimensional hypothesis. We also can't speculate as to why they would "abandon" their craft here. We literally don't know what is, or was going on, what is coming here, what their intentions are, or how many different players / agendas are at work. As for whether or not we could shoot them down..... I agree, not with guns or missiles. We do have some pretty cool Laser and EM-based weapons being put on warships now...who knows how long those have been operational. Everyone has been waiting for "The Government" to disclose "the truth" about UFO's. Now a high ranking government intelligence official has come out and confirmed that (at least some of) what's been whispered about and "leaked" for years is true, and the response is "I think it's a psy-op". Let's wait for the investigation to proceed. This whistleblower didn't just come out of nowhere. He's been trying to work through all of the "official" channels for years, and (allegedly) has decided to go public with what he can after meeting both resistance and reprisals for what he's done. Also, leaking classified documents would land him in jail quickly....even if their classification was unjustified. The release of the hard evidence on this is something that would happen much further down the line, but it seems the ball is now rolling. There is apparently much more to come on this, so let's just keep our ears open, and watch what happens from here. Again, If true, this is kind of a big deal so I feel it's worth paying attention.

This. Especially if you shot it down over your own territory. There is the GIANT caveat here that UFOs/UAP in the (distant and recent) past have reportedly been able to toy with fighter jets in a manner that makes it clear the jets would be hilariously outclassed in a straight up fight. I am not convinced those incidents were anything but a show put on for the media / public. You don't just find one balloon, then suddenly 3 more within a week, then zero after that. I'm calling shenanigans.

@briansommers I found the destination finder I built. Let me know if you'd like to take a look at it. You just input an origin airport ICAO, min/max runway length and min/max distance, and it'll spit out a random list of up to 10 airports that meet the criteria. DB

My understanding is yes, that is how things are supposed to work. Again, the allegation is that this program is, and has been operating without proper oversight, so the people who should have been read-in were not. Allegedly, program names, people involved, and potentially, names of decision makers have been provided to Congress in the 11 hours of testimony Grusch provided.... so if anyone bothers to look, we'll find out. It wouldn't be the first time a classified program has run amok in the US.

I think one of the allegations is that "the program" has been withheld from people and organizations who should have had access. Deeply compartmentalized and 'off the books' - think Russian dolls.

Nobody said they crash frequently. And nobody has indicated definitively 'why' they crashed. Nobody is saying they were all piloted. I get the impression that if any of this is true, the reality (and history) of it would be immensely complicated, and seem like science fiction. How complex is the known history of the human race? Imagine the history of a civilization that's millions of years older.....multiply that by multiple civilizations....which then start interacting with each other. It would make the 'Dune' novels seem like light reading.

There are a lot of reasons that may not be true....at least for the spectrum(s) that we currently transmit and listen. https://public.nrao.edu/ask/what-equipment-does-one-need-to-send-a-radio-signal-to-a-distant-star/#:~:text=Even though it is true,even the most nearby stars. How could they know we're here? - That's not for any of us to answer (if they are, in-fact, here). We've been "industrialized" for a very short time and are just barely able to detect / see planets orbiting other stars, much less indications of life on them. Hypothetically, what would our observation and detection capabilities look like in a thousand years? A million? It's not for us to assume we're invisible, or hard to detect. For all we know, planet Earth could be the noisy house in the neighbourhood. We just don't know what we don't know. A small island in the Pacific Ocean is very hard to find....until you have satellites. Gotcha. Cheers

There are alot of assumptions in there: Why would radio transmissions be the only way an ET civilization could find us? This also implies that they had no clue we were here for thousands of years prior?... And never visited. "No craft has landed in plain view" - There are many, many witnesses who would disagree with you on that point. Also, perhaps it's not a great idea to routinely land and park your ship in full view of the territorial apes with deadly weapons? You wouldn't expect a troupe of apes in the jungle to understand a scientist's reasons for observing them, or studying the jungle around them? Is it possible that we wouldn't comprehend the motives of a species that's extremely advanced (comparatively) and far more evolved than we are? It's even possible that our presence on this planet is completely incidental to their reason for visiting (i.e. They're not here for us. We're just the wildlife ). We have a very human-centric way of looking at things (we have no choice), but what if we need to realize, like a toddler starting to grow up, that it's not all about us, and we're part of a much bigger picture. All that to say, you can't really guess at motives or speculate too much without tripping over an underlying assumption that hasn't been tested or verified. What's being alleged by this whistleblower is that we found them 90 years ago, but you, me and the rest of the public weren't told. Also, understand that a hundred years is barely a blip in the (known) history of the human race. In that time, we'd just recently figured out (after thousands of years) that slavery is bad.... and it's just now occurring to us that wars are bad for everybody.... Perhaps the "landing on the Whitehouse lawn" (open contract) theatrics are on pause until we grow up a bit more? If it was me out there, I'd be inclined to wait. Hopefully that was coherent. Cheers

I don't know. Maybe start by asking Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, head of AARO. His recent statement (just before the Grusch story broke) was that AARO has no verifiable evidence of an ET presence. Grusch claims that AARO has/had access to some of the same information (non-classified I assume) that he has. So, someone is not being honest, and if anyone bothers to try to verify Grush's claims, we should quickly find out who it is. Both men have something to lose if it's demonstrated that they lied to Congress.

The 80/20 rule is alive and well. I've definitely seen it in the industry, but I've also seen companies that put the effort into diversifying their customer base to reduce concentration risk. Usually ends up being a good idea. DB

There's an underlying assumption in both of those statements: It assumes that the basic premises you're operating from are correct. Unfortunately for us, there are some things we don't know for sure, including: Whether our understanding of Physics is correct, or complete (It's definitely not) This expands to our understanding of the nature time and space The exact nature of our reality The scarcity and / or abundance of intelligent life in the universe (and it's distribution) Without knowing the answers to the above questions "the improbable", as well as "the simplest solution" are meaningless. For example, If you start with the assumptions that: 1) We don't fully understand Physics and 2) Intelligent life in the universe is abundant (and some are much, much older than we are), .....after seeing an anomalous "craft", performing "physics-defying" maneuvers, the simplest solution could be that it's not from here and someone else built it. However, if you presume that all of our existing assumptions about Physics, lack of obvious signs of life "out there" etc. are correct, then yes, you have a conundrum. The simplest solution becomes "it must be from here and / or misidentified natural phenomena". I'm not exactly holding my breath for the latter case. IMO we've learned too much about the universe in the last 500 years to assume the next 500 years won't be as enlightening...and the rate of learning is only accelerating. Every time I hear the argument about the distances in space being "too vast to travel here", or speed of light etc....I imagine myself being in the 16th Century and hearing someone argue that it will always take months to cross the oceans because sailing ships can only go so-fast. Look at us now....