Might as well have said "swamp gas and weather ballon"

[shardian]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/23/airforce.ufo/index.html

Air Force said the "UFO" sighting was actually ten F-16's doing a night training mission, even though they said initially they had zero planes in the air that night, and it took more than two weeks to issue the "ten planes" report.

I'm don't believe in UFO's, but damn this is odd. First off, why would F-16's on a night mission (need massive flood lights? Do they even have massive flood lights? I thought they operated on HUD and readouts during night flight.

Why did it take more than 2 weeks to find out they did have a fairly large night mission going on? I find it pretty scary that our Air Force don't even know where ten 100 million airplanes are, don't you?

[ChadTower]

Of course they know where their planes are... that doesn't entitle us to that knowledge.

[shardian]

If that is the case, they should have said after two weeks, "It was a sensitive training mission and divulging that info was a security risk", or something like that. I have no problems with the military keeping some things from the public. For them to say " oh yeah, we have serious communication issues in which we just don't even know where our planes are at any time." Truth or no, I'd rather think our AirForce is competent, you know?

[ChadTower]

Yep.  Reasonable people may be willing to accept that, but really, it's the media that has to accept it.  The media doesn't like being told "you aren't entitled to that information".

[shardian]

Yep.  Reasonable people may be willing to accept that, but really, it's the media that has to accept it.  The media doesn't like being told "you aren't entitled to that information".

We were a much happier, optimistic country before the media pulled the curtain back.

[ChadTower]

The media is just too damn big now.  Too many stations, too many websites, too many "reporters" who want to be stars.  The hordes are completely unmanageable, unethical, and flat out of control.  It's only going to keep getting worse, too.

[patrickl]

The media is just too damn big now.  Too many stations, too many websites, too many "reporters" who want to be stars.  The hordes are completely unmanageable, unethical, and flat out of control.  It's only going to keep getting worse, too.

Hear hear


I have never heard of an F16 with floodlights. Wat would be the point? The only visible light I could imagine would be navigation lights or the afterburner. I doubt they would be allowed to use th afterburners at night in a populated area though.

[ChadTower]

Afterburners are loud.  They're not something you mistake for a flood light.

[shardian]

Afterburners are loud.  They're not something you mistake for a flood light.

And if 10 F-16's flew past at low altitude with afterburners full blast, there would be no mistaking them for floating lights.

[ChadTower]

if 10 F-16's flew past at low altitude with afterburners full blast it would be physically painful.  It would hurt your ears.

[patrickl]

Well yeah that too, but like I said, I doubt it were the afterburners.

[Jdurg]

The thing is, the US Government has had a LOT of top secret technologies and information for a long time that they have kept secret.  Hell, half the people who worked on the first nuclear weapons had no idea what they were doing.  It IS possible to have something kept completely secret.  I don't believe for one second any of this UFO garbage.  What I DO believe is that we have some pretty sweet technology being developed out in the SW of the USA and the government does not want ANYBODY knowing about it. 

Is Area 51 some massively secure base?  Yes, it is.  Does it contain UFOs?  No, it doesn't.  Does it contain HIGHLY confidential information/weapons/technology?  I'd bet my life on it.

There are just some things that certain people have no need to know about, nor should they.  Hell, when the Atomic Bomb was being developed Harry Truman had zero clue about it until the day he was sworn into office.  Even then, he wasn't told everything.  There's probably a lot of stuff that our current president doesn't know about, and that's not just because he's a complete moron.   

[ChadTower]

Hell, half the people who worked on the first nuclear weapons had no idea what they were doing.  It IS possible to have something kept completely secret.

That was all before 1500 cable channels, the internet, and Britney Spears' cooch shots.  If the media really wanted to know they would.  The only way to keep a secret now is for no one to care.

[shardian]

During WWII, the media was more than happy to be a voluntary propaganda machine. Could you imagine the media as a whole doing what is good for our country nowadays?

[ChadTower]

During WWII, the media was more than happy to be a voluntary propaganda machine. Could you imagine the media as a whole doing what is good for our country nowadays?

That all died when it was proven destroying public figures was more profitable than protecting them.  Watergate did that.  Woodward and Bernstein became celebrities and a whole new predatory media was born.

[Howard_Casto]

You guys scare me with your press hate.  When has propoganda ever been a good thing?  Even in WWII was it good?  The answer is HELL NO!  First off, Hilter was an evil s.o.b. planning to invade our country, we didn't have to be "sold" that war because, unlike wars today, it was a ligitimate cause and a legitimate reason to fight.  What all the propoganda DID do was usher in one of the stupidest non-conflicts in our history, namely the cold war.  The cold war was completely un-necessary because communism simply isn't practical in a large scale and it defeats itself.  Regan didn't win the war against communism, the communists did!  What wwII propoganda did was ingrain into our culture that communism, and as a result all socialism is bad.  So all of that "helping the military" paved the way for lack of universal health care, fear of any all-inclusive community works projects, billions wasted on a war that would never come, and xenophobia with allowed the "new republicans" (read anyone regan and after) to take power, ruin our economy, get well-meaning, but all to trusting men and women killed for causes that are eitehr made up or don't matter and all-in-all ruin the very democracy that we all know and love!

The press is SUPPOSED to give the goverment a hard time, it's what keeps the goverment honest.  The goverment is supposed to be scared of us, not the other way around.  Now while national security is certainly an issue and I can understand outrage (and rightly so) over stuff like newpapers outing cia agents,  which with respect, only happens by the "republican press" when they want to damage the reputation of someone who disagrees with them, stuff like this is totally different.  How hard would it be to simply release a statment saying "what you saw was classified" and then everybody would let it go.  The militiary in their usual stupidity, however simply made up an excuse that NOBODY would buy, just like they did countless times in the past.  What bothers me most though, is the sheer incompetance on their part.  Don't test secret stuff where people can see it!

I'll even play devil's advocate on this one a bit.  Let's say it was aliens or what-not.  Let's say all these ufo sightings were.  Well then the goverment has been working with those little buggers for years now, so could they tell them to fly their spaceships somewhere else where people can't see them?

Rest assured, the ridiculious excuse which took 2 weeks to surface isn't proof of a coverup, rather it's proof of the usual status-quo of military b.s. which involves week-long paperwork trails and "analysts" that invent these cover stories for screw-ups which systematically and constantly insult the intelligence of the press and the general public. 

If it'd been a reall alien-type ufo, then it would have been all over the papers, because, quite frankly, the military cover-up machine is far too slow and incompetant to create a plausible explaination in time. 

Roswell alone might be legit, because the military initially admitted it was some kind of ufo to the local paper, before the higher-ups explained to the local military that we don't tell the truth to the general public and started to cover it up.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, the "cold war" wasn't really a war against communism.  I liken it more to a war of "my dick's bigger than yours" between USA and the USSR.  It was just a battle of who could produce more nuclear weapons and scare the other side into submission.

[DaOld Man]

I dont believe in UFOs, or at least space alien UFOs.
I do believe in government cover ups.
The US and Britian (and USSR) got a lot of plans from Hitler's science team after the war. The Germans  were working on rocket and jet technology, also saucer shaped air ships. (they were also developing atomic weapons.)
The US Government experimented with saucer shaped ships and had several failures.
Thats what a lot of people saw and thought were UFOs.
The stealth bomber came from this technology, and it was tested at night in Area 51 for years before it was made public.
I think the average Joe has no idea of what the government is doing.
And I think the Government controls most of the media, so they only tell you what they feel you should know.
The cold war gave the governments a reason to hide it all. I just dont know what the reasons are now.
Also I wonder how the Germans got so far ahead of us on the science technology? Could it have been space aliens? 

[NiN^_^NiN]

Just some interesting information the japanese goverment finally said that there are UFO's and released some documents a while ago.

Now i dont know if there is alien life or not but if a goverment actually released all these documents for like 50 years and said yes there is then it might not be so far out.

Its still not proof but its abit more crediable than some guy saying he was anally probe raped 

[mr.Curmudgeon]

The media is just too damn big now.  Too many stations, too many websites, too many "reporters" who want to be stars.  The hordes are completely unmanageable, unethical, and flat out of control.  It's only going to keep getting worse, too.

Actually, I'd say it's exactly the opposite. Media conglomeration and broader corporate ownership is the problem. There's nothing "out of control" about our media...there aren't roving bands of rogue reporters trying to break-through the iron curtain of government secrecy. We've got individuals like Rupert Murdoch buying up everything in site.

And these "unmanageable, unethical" reporters you're so worried about? They're doing exactly what they're told to do by the corporations that own them.

Thank GOD for the truly unruly blogosphere...they might be "unprofessional" and "impolite", but I'll be damned if any news that's been worthwhile lately hasn't been the direct result of very determined "citizen journalists" and ex-industry people doing the job our lap-dog "reporters" are supposed to be doing.

Six. It's six companies.

http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml

[ChadTower]

I hate it when the unruly blogosphere gets on motorcycles and in helicopters and chases people around until they end up dead.  It just makes people uncomfortable.

[MaximRecoil]

The Chicago O'Hare UFO sighting of late '06 (link) was chalked up to "a weather phenomenon" by the FAA after first denying any knowledge of the event—until the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

At approximately 4:30 p.m on Tuesday November 7, 2006, federal authorities at Chicago O'Hare International Airport received a report that a group of twelve airport employees were witnessing a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering over gate C-17.

According to eyewitness reports, the strange object was first spotted by a ramp employee who was "pushing back" United Airlines flight 446 which was departing Chicago for Charlotte, North Carolina. The ramp worker then apprised the flight crew of UA446 of the existence of the spinning, metallic object above their aircraft, and it is believed that both the pilot and co-pilot of this aircraft also witnessed the object at that time.

According to Jon Hilkevitch of the Chicago Tribune in an interview on CNN's Glenn Beck program: "The disk was visible for approximately two minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it." [1][2] The UFO was then seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the overcast skies. Witnesses reported that the object left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer and that the mysterious hole disappeared or "closed" within a few minutes. So far, no conclusive photographic evidence of the UFO has surfaced although it was reported to Hilkevitch that one of the United Airlines pilots was in possession of a digital camera at the time of the sighting and may have photographed the event[3].

If I'm ever witnessed committing a crime by a dozen UA employees (including pilots), my defense in court will be that they didn't see me, they saw a "weather phenomenon", because pilots have notoriously poor eyesight and are unfamiliar with what actual "weather phenomena" looks like. Also, "weather phenomena" can perfectly mimic the appearance of anything, such as spinning, metallic, saucer-shaped crafts that hover and then accelerate straight up leaving a hole in the clouds, or even people, like me.